


Snow White and the Vagabond: a Silent Hill Love Story

by nightwish435



Category: Naruto, Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Cameos, Crossover, Denial, Depression, Fog World, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Healing, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Inspired by Silent Hill 2, Justice, Loneliness, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Monsters, Otherworld, Repression, Revenge, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2018-12-21 23:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwish435/pseuds/nightwish435
Summary: A month after the events at Naruto Bridge, Momochi Zabuza has fled to the lone town of Silent Hill, seeking to escape the painful memories he left behind that day. While there, in the depths of the swirling fog and amidst the bizarre creations the town sets against him, Zabuza is joined in his journey by heartbroken ex-officer Yugao and the enigmatic Kabuto, two individuals struggling with their own dark histories. In the end, denial saves nobody, and Zabuza must come to terms with the real love he feels for the angel who saved his life.





	1. The Vagabond and the Widow

_“Take me with you!”_

Zabuza shook his head furiously, fighting with all his might to forget those words as he approached the Observation Deck overlooking Toluca Lake. Everywhere he looked, grey fog blanketed his surroundings, rolling off of the mirror-like lake and obscuring his vision. The atmosphere was gloomy, worsened by the dilapidated, rotten condition of the infrastructure around him.

“Talk about shitty maintenance,” Zabuza muttered as he looked over the lake, to the city far away that the map in his right hand denoted as “Paleville”. “This place looks even grimier than the slums back in Osaka.”

The wandering ex-hitman had heard from various Americans that the town of Silent Hill was a quiet place that soothed the soul and brought peace upon all its visitors. After he had received that quaint travel brochure in his motel mailbox, from an unknown sender that the postman couldn’t determine, Zabuza felt as if he was **called** to go there.

 _“If this place can’t give me peace…then I don’t have a damn clue what else will,”_ he thought as he approached the stairs leading downwards, descending into the forest path that led into town. _“All I want is to forget the past and let it be…heh, ‘water under the bridge’. What an awful phrase that’s become to me.”_

He walked slowly down the steps and onto the beginning of the worn forest path, the fog swirling around him. Zabuza’s footsteps echoed around him as he traversed the trail.

It took him what seemed like an hour to reach the wrought-iron gates before him, which barred the entrance to a graveyard. Zabuza glimpsed between the bars and saw rows upon rows of gray stone tablets jutting out of the grass. When he pressed his hand to the gates, they swung open with an irritating screech, the metal rusted to ruin.

He walked in, unshaken by the presence of so many deceased people, only determined to continue his journey into the town. Before he allowed himself to continue walking, Zabuza paused in confusion at the sight of a purple-haired woman kneeling next to one of the graves.

“Hayate…” she whispered wearily as Zabuza quietly approached her.

“Who are **you** mourning?” he asked her, and the woman jumped up in shock.

“W-what the?! Who-” she stuttered, before turning around and beholding the stern man walking towards her.

“I…” she answered softer, her brown eyes drifting sadly to the grave beside her. “He was my fiancée. Gekkou Hayate. One of the brightest policeman in the history of Kyoto’s department. We were slated to wed this coming autumn, when the leaves surrounding Kyoto turn that wondrous scarlet hue…but he was murdered by a violent criminal.”

Zabuza did his best to hide his anxiety at the mention of that name. Captain Hayate was known throughout Japan’s criminal underworld as a fearsome, cunning man able to hunt down any target using only the most basic of evidence.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he told her sheepishly, hoping that the woman wouldn’t catch onto his fear. “I lost somebody precious to me too, not too long ago…”

The somber woman watched as Zabuza shook his head once more, refusing to let his repressed memories resurface. She sighed, and gave him a look of utter pity.

“Denial is so hard to get past, isn’t it?” she asked. “You wish and ache for it to be nothing but a nightmare that you’ll soon wake up from…but this horror is our everyday reality now.”

“Right. I don’t want to dwell on it for even one second, much less talk about it. And what’s your name, by the way?”

“Oh, forgive me,” she said, straightening up. “My name is Uzuki Yugao. I, too, was a police officer like my fiancée, in the same department as him, though I chose to resign after his untimely death. The depression prevented me from carrying out my work properly. And you?”

“Momochi Zabuza.”

“Momochi…Zabuza…”

Yugao’s brow furrowed bitterly, and she coldly asked him, “The lone criminal, Momochi Zabuza?”

Zabuza shuddered involuntarily at the icy contempt in her voice, and she told him, “I didn’t expect to cross paths with a renegade like yourself, especially in a place like this.”

“I’m no longer-” he started to say, before she cut him off with an impatient wave of her hand.

“I get it. You’ve left that in the past, just like I’ll never be a policewoman ever again. I have no right to apprehend you, and honestly, I don’t have any real desire either. After all, it looks like we’re both stuck in the same boat, and here for the same reason.”

Zabuza couldn’t help but let out a tense breath of relief, after half-expecting her to violently attack him. Yugao rolled her eyes and turned back to the grave, frowning in desolation.

He took a closer look, and gawked in confusion at the sight of Hayate’s name on the stone.

Yugao caught his glance, and said to him, “I was shocked too, when I first stumbled upon this place. Hayate was buried with full honors back in Kyoto, and as far as I knew, he never came to Silent Hill. So why, then, does this grave say otherwise? And why, for that matter, do so many of these graves have Japanese names?”

She waved her hand around them, and when Zabuza looked at the surrounding graves, he saw that she was right. All of the graves he could see were decorated with Japanese female names, an oddity that was unexpected in the small American town.

“A logical explanation is that Silent Hill has a large Japanese populace, but…,” Yugao bit her lip. “I don’t see that being the case. I’ve done my research before coming here, and I found no evidence that any Japanese community exists in the area. So what gives?”

Zabuza nodded absentmindedly, but froze up in alarm when he read the name on the gravestone to the right of Hayate’s.

**Yuki Haku**

“Haku…” he whispered, the porcelain, beaming face of his angel flashing through his mind abruptly.

“Was she…?” Yugao hesitantly asked, and Zabuza sadly shook his head.

“He…he was…”

“Ah. I understand. It must’ve been tough, being with a guy in a hush-hush culture like ours.”

“You…have no idea.”

The two of them stood together silently, gazing down at the gravestones bearing their lovers’ names, fighting back tears as distant memories ached to be remembered.

“Forgive me for asking, but what brought you here?” Zabuza quietly asked her, his weary eyes not budging from Haku’s name.

“Peace, like you must be seeking, and…answers.”

“Answers?”

Yugao turned to him, and when he looked into her brown eyes, Zabuza flinched at the raw malice suddenly present.

“I want answers as to who directed that bastard to kill my man!”

“What do you mean?”

“Our department desperately researched the killer, a man codenamed ‘Baki’, and determined that while the monster was notoriously known for being a violent murderer, he was lacking overall in intelligence. It’s improbable that he hunted down Hayate on his own. There had to be somebody else working in the shadows, with the knowledge of who Hayate was, who directed Baki to accurately hunt my fiancée down and kill him!”

_“Baki…that savage mongrel? I never thought he'd have the balls to go after a police officer...somebody must've paid him a large sum to get him to hunt down her fiancée. ”_

From the few short conversations Zabuza had shared with his fellow criminal before leaving him and all his other vicious comrades behind in Japan, he had learned that Baki was infamously known as a berserker who relished in causing his victims as much pain as humanly possible before finally silencing them. Zabuza still had nasty memories of Baki gloating over his murder methods as they sipped at cheap bottles of sake in the tunnels beneath Osaka.

“Who do you think it could’ve been?” he asked her, noting how her previously somber features were fully contorted with fury.

“ **A government official, no doubt**. While I’m not typically one to obsess over conspiracy theories, it could only have been somebody with working knowledge of Hayate’s authority, along with the high-key resources needed to track him down to his mere nighttime habits.”

Zabuza grimaced at the accuracy of her theory, and muttered to her, “It makes unfortunate sense, even to me. None of the other criminals I knew during my own times as a renegade had the mental capacity to know how to hunt a highly intelligent target like your man was.”

“Exactly. And I’m certain that by coming here, to a quiet place known to the locals as a hub for exposing hidden secrets, I’ll learn who that bastard is, so I can find him and bring him to justice!”

_“By ‘justice’, she likely means ‘violent slaughter’. Well, not like I can blame her.”_

Yugao took a deep, long breath to recompose herself, and asked him, “But what are you looking for here, Zabuza? Besides, of course, peace over his passing?”

He looked to the corner of the enclosure, where the path continued at the opposite side of the graveyard, and told her, “Maybe it’s an escape from my pain that I’m seeking here. Maybe it’s something else. But I won’t find out what I’m really looking for until I make myself walk into this strangely quiet town.”

Yugao nodded, and said to him, “Be careful going in there, Zabuza. Even for a smaller, out-of-the-way town like this, Silent Hill is far too empty. You’re the only other person I’ve seen since arriving here, and I have a sinking feeling that it’ll be the same once you and I walk into the town itself.”

“What do you think lies in the depths of this fog?” he asked her, the unnatural chill making them both shiver.

“I’m not sure myself. And I’d rather not imagine.”

“Fair enough. It’s been nice talking, but I need to get a move on.”

She glanced at Hayate’s gravestone and said to him, “Go on ahead, then. I need to stay here for a little while and…think about things. Good luck, and whomever…or **whatever** you find in there…stay safe.”

“You too.”

They parted ways, and Zabuza soon found himself walking into the east side of Silent Hill’s South Vale district, not a single person in sight like Yugao had told him. Just like the Observation Deck far away, the entirety of the town, from the street to the buildings, looked like it was rotting away from disrepair. Scattered about the surrounding streets were various stationary cars, all rusted over and looking utterly unusable. It looked like nobody had taken care of the town in ages. Silent Hill was abandoned, as far as Zabuza could tell.

_“Where is everybody?”_

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of stifled moaning coming from down the street.

To his left, crouched next to a rundown flower shop, was a weeping figure, their hands clasped tightly in what looked like a praying stance. Zabuza walked forward hesitantly, not sure what they were doing nor who they were, the fog still messing with his vision.

“Hey, you there!” he called out. “Where the hell did everybody go?”

The figure paused, and slowly straightened up, while Zabuza paused in terror at the sight before him.

What from a distance he had mistaken for another human was a grey, scabbed creature looking even more rotten than the town itself. Where its eyes should’ve been were only empty sockets, with twin black streams running down each hole, as if it was weeping. Its mouth was clenched in a disturbing grimace, filled with ruined teeth that showed extreme decay. Greasy, unkempt black hair tumbled down its shoulders and in front of its face, giving it the look of a classical Japanese _onryou_ vengeful spirit.

Zabuza stood paralyzed with fear as he watched it hobble towards him, moaning and groaning with each step. In the distance, a shadowy silhouette came bounding towards him, rapidly closing the distance.

“Help me out over here!” Zabuza shouted desperately, and the creature before him, still clasping its hands in that prayerful manner, froze up in its own terror as the fog revealed what the newcomer really was.

Towering over Zabuza and the whimpering creature was a demonic looking policeman, covered in scarlet, scaly skin and snarling with a mouth of razor-sharp fangs. Violent red eyes bored into Zabuza’s face, and even the ex-criminal once called a “demon” by other convicts knew that he was likely staring at the real thing.

_“What the fuck is going on?!”_

Zabuza slowly backed away, and to his shock, he watched the cowering creature break its praying grasp and shoo at him desperately. The madness of the situation before him almost stopped him from realizing that the thing was telling him to flee.

Without further ado, Zabuza turned and bolted down Sanders Street, terrified at the inhuman presences appearing around him. Like insects crawling out of rotten wood, more and more of the whimpering creatures and hideous demon cops appeared everywhere Zabuza looked, emerging from every building and corner of the dilapidated town.

“This is insane!” he gasped as he fled, unsure of where to go within the town, and aching more than anything else for the comfort of Haku’s gentle love.


	2. Entrance of the Bandaged Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Mention of Past Rape and Graphic Images of Violence

_When Zabuza met Haku, the boy was merely 14 years old, a homeless waif ignored and despised by everyday society. At that time, Momochi Zabuza gained his infamous reputation as a “demon” among renegades, seemingly ruthless and without pity for any opponent foolish enough to test his fury._

_Gazing into those doe-like brown eyes, forlorn and without any trace of hope had made even Zabuza pause. Haku gawked up at the lithe young man, and to his shock, offered him a wide, sincere smile._

_“What are you smiling for, boy?” Zabuza had gruffly asked._

_The boy continued to beam, and told him, “You and I…mister, we have the same eyes! I’ve finally found somebody as lonely as me!”_

_Zabuza had reeled on the spot from the brutal accuracy of the boy’s otherwise innocent remark, and opted to take him off the streets soon afterward. To other warring gang members, Zabuza stated that he made his choice because he saw use in Haku as a decoy for luring his targets into false security._

_But to Haku, who had spent nearly five years as a street urchin in Osaka, Zabuza was the boy’s savior. Not only did Zabuza provide him with a roof over his head along with decent food to eat, the lone renegade listened, albeit under a begrudging mask, to Haku’s painful story._

_“I was born to a loving mother and father in the northern part of this city. My mother happened to be an Ainu woman, a member of the indigenous people originating in Hokkaido, who was assimilated into modern society here in Osaka. She kept that fact secret from her husband, out of fear that he would reject her.”_

_“It was my own naivete that brought about our family’s destruction. One day, after I had spent a quiet summer afternoon rummaging around my mother’s cabinet, I discovered a secret drawer that contained Ainu heritage items from her ancestors: ancient necklaces and such. When I took one of the necklaces out and asked my mother about them, she harshly scolded me, then apologized, explaining that I must never share the secret of our heritage with my father.”_

_“Unfortunately, my father had been eavesdropping the entire time, and that night, violently revealed himself to be an anti-Ainu racist when he used a gun kept secret from the police to gun my mother down in front of me. With her last breath, she cursed her husband, and told me to flee to her room and find the other secret drawer hidden in the lowermost shelf of her cabinet.”_

_“When I fled there, and removed the wooden panel, I discovered to my horror that my mother had hidden a gun, locked and loaded, for the purpose of self-defense. It seems that she had prepared from the beginning for my father to hate her for her Ainu heritage. With that gun, I defended myself…and killed my father with three miraculously aimed shots.”_

_With nobody to care for me, I became a nameless orphan, wandering the streets of Osaka, living off of whatever scraps I could find. It wasn’t until I met you, Mr. Zabuza, that I met any person with the compassion to take me off the streets.”_

_When he had heard the boy’s story, it was a herculean struggle on Zabuza’s part to maintain his emotionless mask, as the horror of Haku’s life threatened to provoke tears to stream from his eyes.  
“Humans are trash, boy,” he told Haku coldly. “All it takes is one thing to differentiate yourself from the rest of the world, and people seize it as an excuse to despise you. In the underworld lying beneath the streets of this city, those of us who’ve realized that one harsh truth thrive together in our solitude and hatred of society’s hypocritical standards.”_

_At that time, Zabuza asked him, “But what about the police, boy? You meant to tell me that not even the officers here offered to help you?”_

_To his alarm, Haku had shuddered violently, his soft brown eyes narrowed in fear, as he answered, “No, Mr. Zabuza. In fact, one lone officer brutalized me to the point that…I fear I’ll never be able to enjoy intimacy ever again.”_

_“You mean…”_

_At that, not even Momochi Zabuza could act statuesque. Haku stared off into the distance, weeping as he whispered on._

_“When I thought that I had no other option but to offer up my body to strangers in exchange for money, that man used me for selfish purposes, and left me more broken than ever. I still have nightmares and daytime delusions that he’ll find a way to harm me again!”_

_Zabuza snarled, placed a sturdy hand on Haku’s frail shoulder, and told him sternly as the boy looked up at him in shock, “Like Hell I’ll let that bastard hurt you again, boy! I swear it! He comes anywhere near you in my presence, I’ll rip his head off his shoulders and leave his filthy carcass to rot in the streets!”_

* * *

Sanders Street teemed with Penitents, the name Zabuza had chosen to label the grim praying creatures with, all shooing him away desperately as more and more of the officers emerged out of the fog chasing after him. Everywhere he looked, the scarlet fiends came stampeding after him as he fled for his life.

_“What’s up with this place?”_ Zabuza thought as he neared the end of Sanders Street and stopped to take a breath. _“There’s not a single human in sight, and these things sure aren’t people!”_

Once he had ensured that nothing was following him, Zabuza took a right onto Neely Street, and saw the door to Neely’s Bar, worn and rusted like everything else in sight. Zabuza clutched the doorknob, twisted it, and breathed a huge sigh of relief as the door swung inward.

His vision was interrupted by the presence of a flashlight with its beam aimed right at the door, sitting on the counter next to what looked like a handgun and a pack of ammo. Zabuza took the items hesitantly, feeling the gun in his hand and sensing that it was fully usable.

“Who would leave a gun lying around here?” he muttered as he carefully pocketed the ammo.

The inside of the bar was grim and dingy, with no appealing liquor in view, the only bottles containing filthy browned liquid that was hardly appealing. Adding to the dreariness was the peeling, moldy gray wallpaper surrounding Zabuza as he looked around.

_“What a waste of a bar. Oh well. I need to find where to go next.”_

He exited the bar, and paused in confusion when he saw a small Japanese boy standing across the street from him, glaring with accusing eyes.

“Monster!” the boy yelled, pointing at Zabuza.

“Huh?!” Zabuza answered as he looked around madly, checking for more abominations, until he realized that the brat was talking about him.

“You monster! You were Gato’s thug, and you tried to kill my Grandpa just for building a bridge!”

_“G-Gato?! No, ugh-”_

Zabuza cried out in pain and clutched his head as vile memories of the scumbag businessman and the villagers who had feared Gato’s influence made the renegade’s head pound violently. The misty image of that accursed bridge burned bright and viciously in his mind’s eye until he forced it under through meekened willpower.

_“This is Inari, Tazuna’s loudmouth grandkid! What’s he doing here?!”_

Inari continued to shout at him, “You still lie to yourself about what you did, and what that boy did for you! You make me sick!”

Without warning, the brat bolted down Neely Street, and Zabuza grunted in exasperation as he chased after him, knowing that one of the barbaric officers would likely harm the boy if they saw him.

Through the fog, Zabuza saw Inari take a sharp left onto Katz Street, and as he followed desperately, he heard a sharp creek of metal sound off, echoing off of the dilapidated buildings around him. Zabuza grimaced as he saw more officers and Penitents dotting the street before him, but charged forward nonetheless, not willing to have Inari be harmed in his presence.

When he ran forward, he saw a metal gate slowly swinging to a halt on his right, barring the entrance to what his map denoted as the “Wood Side Apartments”. He saw the front door to the complex cracked open in front of him, and knew that Inari had to have fled inside.

_“Stupid brat, running around like this! He’s gonna get himself hurt by whatever this town’s hiding!”_

The entrance room of the complex was quiet and dark, Zabuza’s flashlight providing the only light. His beam revealed two more packs of handgun ammo lying next to the rotting staircase, which he gladly seized and pocketed. Inari was nowhere in sight.

Just as he was about to explore the upper levels, Zabuza heard the telltale hideous growling of a demon officer coming down the steps. He swore under his breath and ducked behind the reception desk to his right, shuddering and gripping his handgun tightly.

Sure enough, one of the crimson fiends revealed itself, descending the steps haphazardly, and looking around slowly with that twisted snarl. It descended the steps and landed on the first floor with a thud, but before it could proceed, the door to the courtyard to Zabuza’s right burst open.

Standing in the doorway was a tall, muscular figure wrapped entirely in blood-soaked bandages, revealing nothing except for its mouth, bared in a permanent snarl filled with shark-like teeth. Despite its eyes being covered along with everything else, it was apparent that the newcomer could see the demon officer clearly, as it immediately turned to it and raised its weapon.

_“No way!”_ Zabuza thought as he saw what the thing was carrying. _“That’s…”_

The monster lifted its massive sword, resembling a gigantic butcher’s knife with one circular hole at the end and a half-circle indent near the handle. It was the same weapon that Zabuza had daydreamed of wielding against both his violent colleagues and the scumbag officers who served not the law, but their own disgusting desires.

_“That thing…it’s the ‘Kubikiribocho’ that I’ve longed to wield for so many years! Where did this creature get it from?!”_

Zabuza watched as the officer bellowed a war cry and charged at the stranger, who emitted a horrible snarl, swung the blade with a fell swoop, and swiftly decapitated the fiend in one hit.

Blood splattered everywhere as the head crashed down next to the reception desk, frightening Zabuza to the point of jumping up in alarm, and unwittingly revealing himself to the violent man before him. The Bandaged Man cocked his head at Zabuza, ignoring the crumped and oozing corpse of the officer at his feet, and slowly stepped forward, raising the sword as it moved.

“Get away from me!” Zabuza shouted, and he raised the gun to the creature’s head.

His opponent didn’t pause, only continuing to raise the massive blade ominously as it crept towards Zabuza. The renegade pulled the trigger, and a shot burst forward from the handgun, aimed true at the Man’s forehead.

To Zabuza’s horror, the bullet merely bounced off, as if the creature was made of metal underneath its wrappings. It didn’t so much as flinch as Zabuza tried futilely to shoot at the rest of its body, all of his bullets repelled likewise.

_“Why won’t this blasted gun do anything?! And what the Hell is this creature made of?”_

Just as the Bandaged Man raised the beheading blade, ready to strike Zabuza down, an unearthly siren resounded in the distance, making Zabuza flinch and the Man pause. The sound rose and fell slowly unceasingly, as the Man turned away from Zabuza and walked towards the front entrance, seizing the door and flinging it open unceremoniously.

Zabuza watched the Man walk away out of sight, and then, the siren tapered off, leaving a sinister echo in the air. Once again, he was alone, with the beheaded corpse of the demon officer the only other presence in the room.


	3. A Call to Remember

Once his nerves had calmed down, Zabuza walked outside, and grimaced at the sight of more beheaded officers scattered around the area, though the quivering Penitents were evidently unharmed. A long trail of blood led to the east end of Katz Street, and Zabuza gladly chose to walk in the opposite direction, heading towards Munson Street and the west side of South Vale.

It took him a few minutes to walk down Munson Street, turn right at Rendell Street, and enter into the west side of South Vale, which already seemed less crowded with buildings than the first half of the district. In the distance, Zabuza could see a large, gray-white building, which had to be the “Brookhaven Hospital” noted on his map.

_“Maybe the brat went in there. There’s only one way to find out.”_

He turned right onto Carroll Street, and approached the building cautiously, noting the clusters of officers around the area. Zabuza crept up to the entrance and successfully snuck in without alerting the monsters to his presence.

Once again, if it hadn’t been for his flashlight, Zabuza would’ve been blind, due to the interior darkness of the hospital. Nobody was in sight, though he heard distorted footsteps echoing from the upper floors. He ducked into the room in front of him, which had to be the main office judging by the documents lying around.

On the desk to his left was a copy of the building map, which Zabuza took and put away in his pocket. Next to the map was a random note about survivor’s guilt that Zabuza felt compelled to read.

 

_“Survivor’s Guilt: When Imagined Faults Destroy the Psyche”_

_In my years of treating patients at Brookhaven, I’ve dealt with a rising number of individuals who express to me their guilt over roles that they’ve never played. Classically, this is what Survivor’s Guilt is: a person’s mistaken belief that they had a hand, or could’ve prevented, a traumatic event involving somebody they knew. In recent years, this condition has been recategorized as a subset of PTSD._

_During my sessions with patients combatting this condition, I frequently hear them say things like “I could’ve saved them” or even “It should’ve been me instead”. All too often, my patients who struggle with Survivor’s Guilt over the traumatic loss of a dear person tell me that they believe that their life should’ve ceased instead of their loved one’s. I worry for some of them that this belief will lead to suicidal tendencies if allowed to fester._

_In order to properly treat this form of guilt, it is vital for us to help the patients understand the difference between the reality of these traumatic events and their emotionally distorted versions. While guilt is certainly a normal human response to the traumatic loss of a loved one, blaming oneself for failing to save them will only lead to self-destruction at the end. Depression-like symptoms are likely to result from refusing to let go of this needless burden._

_-Dr. J. Middleton_

 

Zabuza turned away from the note and grimaced, thinking to himself, _“Damn, that hits way too close to home.”_

Outside the main office, he heard a man mutter to himself, “My goodness, what a dreary looking place this hospital is.”

Without missing a beat, Zabuza yanked open the office door and stepped out, shocking the man on the opposite side. Before him stood a young man of moderate height and a slight build, dressed in formal business wear with his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. After gazing at Zabuza for a moment, the man’s composure calmed down, and the stranger greeted him with a smile.

“Hello there. My name is Yakushi Kabuto, government researcher and assistant to Maenari Nobuo, the famed Japanese biological research man. What’s your name, sir?”

Zabuza eyed him warily, not trusting what he viewed as a pretentious front, and said as he closed the door behind him, “Momochi Zabuza, freelance handyman. What are you doing here in Silent Hill?”

Kabuto smirked at him and answered, “Well, research, of course. Why else? For that matter, Mr. Momochi, why are **you** here?”

“Personal business,” he answered coldly, “that’s all.”

“Oh come now, there must be more than that.”

“Nothing else that you need to know.”

Kabuto cocked an eyebrow at the tone in Zabuza’s voice, and told him, “There’s no need to be so hostile, Mr. Momochi. I’m merely trying to know more about you, that’s all.”

“I have no interest in opening up to somebody like you.”

“Somebody like me?” Kabuto asked, his tone dripping with mock concern. “What on earth could that mean?”

“Whatever you know it means.”

“Such a clever answer.”

The researcher glanced down the hall, and told Zabuza, “This hospital is full of surprises, Mr. Momochi. It seems that American psychiatrists have had to deal with quite the recent influx of…damaged individuals, I suppose you could say.”

“Like what?”

“In the examination room down this hall, I’ve found far too many documents about this hospital’s patients, and even the staff, too. It seems that the practices used here might not be totally professional after all. Care to take a look?”

“Why should I have any interest in exploring an abandoned hospital with you?” Zabuza asked him, unable to understand Kabuto’s motivation.

“Simple. I found in that room information that you, specifically, might thoroughly enjoy. Something about a boy named… **Yuki Haku**.”

At that, Zabuza froze up like a statue. Kabuto’s eyes gleamed as Zabuza stammered in confusion.

“W-what the Hell are you talking about?!”

“So you **do** know him after all!” Kabuto exclaimed, smirking at him in satisfaction. “Good. Then allow me to show you the room I’m talking about.”

Kabuto abruptly turned away and walked down the hall and out of sight, leaving Zabuza to chase after him desperately.

_“Why would this hospital have info on Haku? He…he’s dead, and he never once said to me that he ever came to America! So why…”_

More painful images of Haku flashed through his mind, and it was all Zabuza could do to fight them off.

He watched Kabuto stop outside a room on the opposite side of the first floor, beckoning inside with a pointed finger. Zabuza hesitantly pushed open the door and stepped inside, using his flashlight to glance around.

The darkness inside the examination room was barely penetrable, and the only thing Zabuza could make out was a flat, square object resting on a desk in the back of the room. Zabuza glanced behind him at Kabuto, who nodded at him encouragingly.

“Go on, Mr. Momochi,” the man said, smiling at him. “The info I told you about can be found further back, where that desk is.”

Zabuza walked forward a few more steps, and jumped in fright when he heard the door suddenly slam shut behind him.

Cold laughter echoed behind him as Zabuza whirled around and pushed at the door, only to find that it had been locked from the outside. He pounded his fists on the wasted metal furiously as Kabuto mocked him from the other side.

“For such a clever criminal, Momochi Zabuza, you fell for this spectacularly. Are you seriously so desperate to get over the death of your lover that you’d instantly trust a stranger you’ve never met?”

“How the fuck do you know all of that?!” Zabuza shouted at him, as he heard movement behind him in the dark corner of the room.

“It’s simple, you idiot. I told you that I’m a researcher. You may’ve done all you could do to hide yourself from the rest of the world, but thanks to my skills and resources, I was able to learn everything about you, including the fact that you were in a secret homosexual relationship with the boy who was your apparent ward. Not only that, but poor Haku is **dead** , isn’t he?”

“ **DON’T YOU DARE MOCK HAKU, YOU SLIMY BASTARD!** ” Zabuza screamed, trying to ignore the footsteps coming closer.

Kabuto laughed again and told him, “That’s what I thought. So you **have** been repressing your feelings for him all this time! Well then, Mr. Momochi…I think it’s time you paid a visit to a doctor. Have fun in there, why don’t you? Maybe it’ll do some good for your pitiful damaged heart!”

“You fucker! Let me out of here before I-”

“Before you what? You’re trapped, and I can only imagine what this thing is about to do to you. I’ll enjoy seeing the results when I come back.”

With that, Kabuto clomped away, laughing harshly as Zabuza turned around, snarling as he beheld his opponent.

The flashlight illuminated a crouched figure adorned with white fur, hands tipped with razor-sharp claws, and a wolf-like mask obscuring its face. Even the figure’s hair was white, and Zabuza’s rage momentarily disappeared when he realized who it resembled.

_“This thing…it looks like that police lieutenant, Hatake Kakashi…”_

He readied his handgun and used a spare box of ammo to reload it, crouching into an attack position as the monster bolted forward, bellowing something incomprehensible as it swiped at him.

Zabuza dodged and started to fire his gun, landing a few hits on the creature and eliciting some grunts of pain. The shaman-like creature quickly brushed the assault off and resumed the attack, dancing forward and continuously shouting that bizarre word at Zabuza as the renegade dodged.

As they fought, Zabuza registered a distant sound echoing all around them, like the hum of a decrepit machine within a dark corner of the hospital. After a few more moments of firing bullets at the creature, he realized with a chill that the same siren that had somehow made the Bandaged Man leave him alone was once more resounding from an unknown place within Silent Hill.

His attention was abruptly returned to the creature as Zabuza narrowly dodged a swipe from its sharp claws. The thing snarled at him, and bellowed the same word slower, allowing Zabuza to finally understand what it was saying.

“ **Omoidase!** ” it roared at him as Zabuza capered around it. “ **Omoidase!** ”

_“What? That’s how you command somebody to ‘remember’ in Japanese…”_

The siren gradually grew in sonorousness as the bullets in Zabuza’s gun emptied. He tried to grab at his pocket to search for more ammo, but stopped when he saw his opponent cease moving. Before him, the creature snarled at him, and suddenly did an acrobatic backflip, landing on top of the desk in the back.

Without warning, the siren peaked as the creature stooped down, seized the square object, and raised it high above its head, shrieking for the last time as a ceiling light burst into life above them.

“ **O-MOI-DA-SE!** ”

There, clutched high in the grasp of the shaman-like monster, was a beautiful portrait of Yuki Haku himself, beaming gently down at Zabuza, who quaked in shock at the unexpected sight.

“W-what’s going on-”

Zabuza’s vision suddenly went out of whack, everything but Haku’s smiling face reduced to a blur reminiscent of tears obscuring surroundings like a watercolor work of art. The light behind the portrait gleamed viciously bright, giving Haku’s picture a divine glow as Zabuza was swept off his feet by an unseen force, and levitated off the ground on his back. Darkness crept in from all corners as his flashlight was forcefully shut off, and the last thing he saw was the picture poised high above him.

A moment later, his vision was restored, and Zabuza shuddered as he registered his new surroundings: a tunnel-like hallway rotted far further than anything he had seen in Silent Hill since. The entire place was covered in splotches of blood, with the bricks reduced to a grisly blue color that looked almost ripped away in some places. He was unable to move, his arms bound at his side as the unseen force slowly carried him from the entrance part of the hallway to the opposite end.

“ **Zabuza…** ”

He gasped aloud as he registered who the voice belonged to. There was no mistaking the soft, pleading tone: Haku’s voice had resounded just behind his head, and nothing he could do allowed him to turn around.

_“It can’t be!”_

“ **Zabuza…** ” Haku said again, his voice louder and sounding like he was begging to be heard.

Zabuza tried to speak, and was only able to choke out in what was barely an alarmed whisper, “Haku?”

“ **ZABUZA!** ” Haku wailed, and the renegade gawked as a slender arm robed in white flashed above his head, the petite hand grasping desperately at him as he was carried into the next room, the door behind him melting away into nothingness.

The unseen force that had carried him slowly lifted him back onto his feet, and the instant he touched the ground, the siren disappeared, leaving him shaken and utterly on edge.

_“That was Haku’s voice, without a doubt! Is he here, in this hospital?! Did his spirit somehow find me here? I don’t understand!”_

He looked around, and shuddered as he realized that the environment had definitely worsened. Everywhere he looked, splotches of blood combined with more dark blue hues covered everything in sight, with even the door before him scarred with twin trails of blue-gray color that, just like the same markings on the Penitents, were reminiscent of tears.

_“What, is this supposed to resemble pain and sorrow, or something else soppily poetic?”_

It appeared that he was in a distorted version of the first floor dayroom, no longer filled with the usual amenities prepared for mental health patients, but instead, items such as a worn blue kimono that heavily resembled the one Haku loved to wear. The dayroom had turned into a memory room by whatever power was behind the odd happenings in Silent Hill.

Zabuza glanced around some more and grimaced, murmuring to himself, “This place is trying to drag all of my memories out of the abyss, and I don’t know how much longer I can fight it.”


	4. The Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Scenes of Graphic Violence

Scattered around the transformed memory room were various objects that Zabuza recognized from his years with Haku: a ruined, useless copy of the handgun he had always carried, the ornamental bracelet that Haku’s mother had left him, and a pocket-sized wooden statuette of St. Jerome Emiliani, the patron saint of abandoned children. Zabuza eyed the statuette with weary eyes, remembering the excited chatter Haku had shared with him the day the boy had found it in the streets of Osaka.

_“Mr. Zabuza, look what I found!”_

_“What is that, boy? I don’t recognize that man.”_

_“This is a statuette of St. Jerome Emiliani, the patron of orphaned children! I’m so happy! I feel like my momma helped me find this!”_

_“Then by all means, congratulations. I’m glad it makes you happy.”_

That day, now easily five years past, was a dim but peaceful memory that made Zabuza meekly smile.

_“He was so damn thrilled when he found that thing. Haku probably wished for a sign that his mother was at peace and watching out for him. Looks like in the end, he got one.”_

Zabuza turned to the door with the tear-like stripes, and tightly gripped the gun he had found in Neely’s Bar. The ominous, distorted footsteps sounding from the floors above were still echoing even after the transition, and Zabuza knew that another monstrosity awaited him in the shadows of the derelict hospital.

He opened the door and closed it behind him, taking in the ruined 1st floor hallway before him. Whereas everything in sight had been dilapidated, the walls and doors were now all a dark blue, with more splotches of blood appearing at random. It seemed that the entire hospital had taken on a symbolic representation of the sadness and painful, violent memories repressed in Zabuza’s psyche.

A bizarre giggling resounded from around the corner, and Zabuza froze up in terror at the sight of a deranged, cackling nurse wearing a permanent maniacally wide grin dancing towards him. Her dirty uniform was splattered with crimson blood, and it took Zabuza a moment to snap out of his fear and ready his weapon.

“Back away from me, bitch!” he shouted, but the nurse made no sign of stopping.

A grand total of six rounds were emptied into her torso, and the deranged nurse fell to the floor, twitching sporadically and cackling some more before finally ceasing movement. Zabuza glared down at the atrocity and involuntarily shuddered.

_“What a clownish nurse. Reminds me of the vermin back in Osaka who Haku told me didn’t take his pain seriously, simply because he was an orphaned boy. Apparently, being homeless for so long makes any testimony on your part incredulous in the eyes of society, too.”_

Zabuza backed away from the corpse and headed towards the front door, aching to get out of the bizarre hospital. When he came to the door and attempted to twist the handle, he found to his irritation that he couldn’t make it budge whatsoever. An irritating clicking sound kept resonating from the keyhole above the knob, and Zabuza knew that he needed the main entrance key to leave.

The map of the hospital guided him to the stairwell door, which was also locked for some reason. Zabuza huffed with irritation and turned to find the elevator, which miraculously dinged with a sign of life. The doors opened, allowing Zabuza to step inside the grimy metal box. As the doors closed behind him, he took a moment to breath.

_“Finally, some progress. Now then…where is that bastard, Kabuto? I’m gonna make him pay for tricking me like that!”_

The only button on the floor panel that worked was for the 3rd floor, and when Zabuza pressed it, the elevator lurched upward painfully slow. When another ding resounded, the doors opened, depositing him onto the uppermost level of the hospital.

Almost immediately, a couple of maniacal nurses appeared within the beam of his flashlight, cackling and brandishing what looked like medical knives in their bloodied fists. Zabuza snarled, reloaded his gun and gunned them down, wasting an entire box of ammo on the bizarre fiends.

_“What a damned nuisance. Where am I supposed to find that key?”_

He approached the door leading to the adjoining “S” hallway, which was similarly locked, with a rusted 9-digit keypad imbedded in the wall next to it. Zabuza eyed the keypad with annoyance, and tried to determine what the passcode could be.

The numbers “0”, “1”, and “9” were particularly rusted over, and Zabuza’s brows wrinkled in confusion as he pondered what combination they were meant to create. In whatever logic remained in the demented hospital, the code was likely to be made from 4 digits instead of 3, and the renegade was suddenly dumbfounded.

No clues could be seen in the immediate vicinity, and Zabuza knew he was stumped.

_“I don’t know any codes that could work here. Besides, why are only these three digits the ones looking so used? The only number that can think of working here would be…”_

Zabuza sighed softly and hesitantly typed in “0109”, the digits of Haku’s birthday.

Sure enough, the telltale clicking noise suddenly echoed down the hall, and the door gave way to the adjoining hallway beyond, splattered with more alternating hues of blood and dark blue. More cackling resounded down the hall, and Zabuza reading his gun for more fighting.

A trio of nurses came capering towards him, shrieking together in insane laughter, and Zabuza swore desperately as he gunned them down, having to take precious moments to use another box of ammo to reload. The third nurse came dangerously close to cutting him with her knife before he killed her too, sending her twitching to the floor before coming to a stop.

Most of the doors lining the hall were locked, except for the room “S7”, which gave way to a ruined bedroom containing a crucifix, a diary stuffed under the soggy pillowcase, and a random torn page from a Bible. Zabuza bent forward to read the Bible page first, knowing that his lack of knowledge on the book was sure to befuddle him.

 

_When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly." Jesus said to him, "Shall I come and heal him?" The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour._

 

“What’s this?” Zabuza muttered, confused as he finished reading the passage. “Why did this resident cling to this passage so much?”

_“Wait a minute. Now that I remember, when I first introduced Haku to the other criminals in the slums of Osaka, I called him my ‘boy servant’. My argument was that I was going to use him to trick my enemies into a false sense of security by using Haku as a lure. I guess they took that at face value. But what does that have to do with this passage?”_

The diary entry made him grimace as he read it and understood the author’s fury.

 

_“February 11”_

_I’m sick of the officials here disregarding my trauma. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean that I’m invulnerable. The world acts like men can’t get emotionally wounded like women can, and I’m sick of it. I’m expected to act all tough and shit, but sooner later, I’m going to collapse just like every other wretched soul in this forsake “mental health” hospital._

It was almost like Haku himself had written the entry. Zabuza thought back to the appearance of the joker-like nurses, and snarled softly. He found a random bronze key lying next to the diary entry, and took it, eyeing it suspiciously and knowing full well that it was too small to be the key to the main entrance.

_“This must go to something else in the hospital. But where?”_

He stepped out of the patient room and crept down the hall, where he soon found another elevator and stairwell door awaiting him. Zabuza glanced at the stairwell door, found the keyhole and tried his luck with the bronze key. To his surprise, it worked, and the door swung open, revealing pitch-black stairs descending into the darkness of the hospital.

_“Now we’re getting somewhere. Good.”_

Zabuza ran down the steps, aching to finally leave the hospital and continue his journey within Silent Hill. Doors presumably leading to other floors of the hospital zoomed past him as he fled, until he reached the very end of the stairwell, a metal door covered in brown rust. Without hesitation, he yanked it open and continued to the other side, a winding labyrinth-like hall.

It looked like he was in some part of the hospital’s basement, but Zabuza didn’t care to look at the map with him to be certain. He walked quickly around the bends, and then, to his alarm, he heard heavy footsteps and an ominous screech of metal coming towards him quickly. When he turned around, he shouted in horror at the sight before him.

The Bandaged Man was pounding towards him, no longer moving slow and gracefully like his first appearance in the apartment complex. The Kubikiribocho was poised high in the air, ready to cleave Zabuza in two with one swing.

_“SHIT!”_

Zabuza fled for his life, feeling the swoosh of the massive blade behind him as the Bandaged Man swiped and missed him by mere inches. Faster and faster they ran, the monstrosity chasing the renegade through the hall, giving him no time to rest.

At the final bend of the hall, with what looked like another elevator at the very end, Zabuza pounded forward, aching to get there in time. In his terror, he nearly bowled into the lone Penitent standing before the door, snarling with sudden rage and still as a statue.

With a sudden guttural shriek, it charged at Zabuza, and he knew that he was pinned without anywhere to flee. The scabbed creature knocked Zabuza aside, and then, a horrific squelching sound was heard behind him, as he stood paralyzed before the elevator, which finally opened with a low groan.

He turned around to behold the Penitent standing between him and the Bandaged Man, its meek, ruined hands clutching the blade that had cut almost entirely through its body. The Bandaged Man sneered in what looked like triumph at Zabuza, who was at an utter loss for words at the sight.

And then, the Penitent shakily turned around as far is it could, staring up at Zabuza with Haku’s doe-like brown eyes, its previous grey, empty sockets suddenly replaced without warning.

“R-run!” it gurgled at him, and then, it shoved him back with a strong push belying its weak form.

Zabuza was hurled back into the elevator, which promptly closed before him, giving him one last look at the dying Penitent in the hallway before him. The creature looked like it was waving goodbye at him, and the image that Zabuza had tried to repress for a whole month finally resurfaced violently in his mind’s eye.

When the elevator doors closed and the metal box slowly lurched upwards, Zabuza bit his lip hard and fought back tears as the memory of Haku, his frail arms spread outward in a protective stance, standing before him, taking the bullet meant to kill him returned to the front of his mind.


	5. A True Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of Rape and Graphic Images of Violence

The elevator clanged open at last, and Zabuza wearily saw that he had somehow returned to the first floor of Brookhaven Hospital. He clambered out, and to his relief, saw that there were no nurses waiting for him.

_“That thing…it had Haku’s eyes, and it sacrificed itself to save me…just like… **just like Haku did.** ”_

Down the hall, the door leading to the director’s room stood slightly ajar, the only door on the first floor that looked even remotely unlocked. Zabuza walked in, and found himself in a library-like room, containing bookcases filled with various literature, and a brown desk with odd paraphernalia on top. Of note to him was the vase filled with fresh blue Chinese bellflowers, Haku’s favorite flower.

To his surprise, he saw a large key that could only be the key to the main door, along with a map of Silent Hill containing a large circled area in red marker, and yet another note.

 

_It is time._

_Let the past and future be joined._

_Go to the bridge on Nathan Avenue, at the northwestern corner of South Vale._

_There, before you find your truth in the darkness of Paleville,_

_You will confront the pain you have evaded for so long._

Zabuza grabbed the key, and took note of the desk’s map, which had the northwesternmost corner of the district, where an arrow pointed away towards the northern district of Paleville, right where a river cut through the map. There must’ve been a bridge there, where the author of the note was indicating.

_“Who wrote this note? I’m not in the mood for some know-it-all stalker telling me what to do.”_

He walked out of the director’s room, up to the main door, and tried the key. Just as he thought, it worked, and a massive clank echoed from the keyhole. Zabuza pulled open the door, and stepped outside, to behold the alarming deluge taking over Silent Hill.

Where there had been swirling fog before he had entered Brookhaven Hospital, there was now complete darkness, along with sheets of rain pouring down. The streets were flooded completely, inches of water rising off the ground, with ribbons of blood coming from an unknown source mixed in.

Everywhere he looked, more of the vile demon officers were milling about from all corners, guns drawn and ready to gun him down at the slightest opportunity. Zabuza grasped at his pocket and groaned when he realized that he was out of ammo cartridges, with only the bullets in the gun left to protect him.

_“I’m screwed! Unless I can evade all of these bastards, I’m bound to get hit!”_

He stepped shakily onto Carroll Street and then gawked at the sight of what seemed to be dozens of angry, bleeding Penitents swarming the officers, tackling the much larger entities with their frail bodies and causing mass confusion. When he looked closer, he saw that the blood in the streets was undoubtedly from the many bullet holes that the creatures were sustaining, evidently from the violent officers.

_“W-what is this?!”_

Corpses of murdered Penitents lay scattered around on a further look, and Zabuza collapsed into the bloodied waters as grief took ahold of him with a freshly vicious wave. Nothing he could do was able to stop the sobs that racked his body as the image of Haku’s collapsed, bleeding body flashed to life in his mind’s eye. Instead of seeing the Penitents lying crumpled in the streets, all he could see was his beloved angel lying lifelessly.

As he wept, he felt many grimy hands grab him and yank him back up to a standing position. A crowd of Penitents surrounded him, looking up at him with Haku’s brown eyes, pleading with their wild hand gestures towards the northern bridge, and all of them gurgling at him to run.

“I-I can’t!” he tried to tell them, but the entire mob of Penitents shook their heads furiously in tandem, and continued to desperately point towards the bridge on Nathan Avenue.

“RUN!” they bellowed, and as a few demon officers stampeded towards him, they all shrieked with fury and bounded towards Zabuza’s pursuers, deliberately using their murky bodies to shield him from the oncoming bullets.

With no other choice, Zabuza bolted north on Carroll Street, watching out of his peripheral vision as all of the demon officers were completely swarmed by enraged Penitents, all refusing to let him come under harm.

After a few minutes of running through the rain and flooded street, he finally turned onto Nathan Avenue itself, and made a sharp turn towards the bridge barely a mile away. Behind him, the roars of the demon officers and the furious shrieking of the Penitents drowned away in the rain as he moved forward.

_“They’re defending me from gunfire, just like Haku did. That one in the hallway…and now these in the streets! They’re all acting just like Haku would’ve, were he still alive and by my side!”_

Up ahead, he saw a tiny figure cowering before a much larger one, hidden by the curtain of rain in front of Zabuza’s eyes. He approached the scene cautiously, and then swore violently when he recognized the frightened figure.

Inari, the wandering brat who had been so desperate to evade Zabuza, was shuddering with fright before a towering, cloak wearing monster wearing a hideous Japanese _oni_ mask, like a figure from a classic _Noh_ poem manifested with a hideous purpose. It clutched a gun in its hands, and had it poised right at Inari’s forehead, ready to pull the trigger at a moment’s notice.

“ **Back the fuck away from him, bastard!** ” Zabuza screamed, and before the monster could turn around, he emptied the entirety of his last magazine into the fiend’s body.

The monster collapsed into a murky puddle on the street and ceased movement, allowing Zabuza and Inari to both breathe deeply. Zabuza glanced down at the boy, who was still understandably terrified.

“What…was that thing doing with you, boy?” Zabuza asked him gruffly.

“It wanted to hurt me!” Inari answered sharply, his eyes wide with fear. “It wanted to hurt me badly!”

“This is why I chased after you, brat! I knew that the creatures in this town would have no qualms harming a child like you. You should’ve listened!”

“Fine, I get it! But…”

Inari shot a glance at the crumpled figure lying in the puddle, and meekly asked, “Just what lies underneath that mask?”

Zabuza cocked a brow at the boy, and turned back to the monster, deadly curiosity rising up in him at Inari’s inquiry. He crept forward, bent down, and lifted up the _oni_ mask, only to draw back in horror at recognition of the face underneath.

Staring up at him with lifeless eyes was the face of the wretched cop who had brutalized Haku when the boy was still a homeless orphan. Zabuza clutched at his head and shouted in pain as another awful memory soared back into existence.

* * *

 

_“ **HELP ME, MR. ZABUZA!** ”_

_Zabuza snapped out of his sleep and grabbed the handgun lying underneath his pillow, as the dreaded nightmare that he had paranoidly feared for so long became his waking reality._

_At the opposite end of the tunnel where Haku slept, a massive man was crouched over the fragile boy, screaming in Haku’s cowered face and looking ready to pummel him. Zabuza knew that Baki, Ringo and the others would be of no assistance to him, as they were all out on errands of their own, or wandering around in a distant part of the tunnels underneath Osaka._

_He bounded forward, clutching the gun tightly, and closed the distance quickly._

_“ **Back the fuck away from him, you piece of shit!** ” Zabuza bellowed, making Haku’s assaulter pause and abruptly turn around._

_Before Zabuza could so much as aim, the brute had jumped on him, seizing his wrist and twisting the gun out of his grasp, kicking it away behind them both and far out of reach. Zabuza growled furiously as he glared up at the face of the monstrosity who had left poor Haku with recurring nightmares._

_“The boy is mine!” the man screamed, and proceeded to rain his fists on Zabuza as they squirmed on the ground._

_“No!” Zabuza shouted back as he barely managed to protect himself from his opponent’s massive fists. “ **I won’t let you hurt him ever again!** ”_

_“Like I’ll let a lowlife criminal such as you stop me from taking him! He couldn’t run away from me forever, and I’ll kill you here and now for getting in my way!”_

_“ **DON’T TOUCH HIM WITH YOUR FILTHY HANDS!** ”_

_Without warning, gunshots resounded throughout the tunnels, and the man shrieked in agony as his blood splattered everywhere. Zabuza didn’t move a muscle, watching in horror on his back as their attacker twitched violently and rolled off of him, multiple gunshot wounds now on his back._

_Standing only inches away from them was Haku himself, enraged and screaming violently as he emptied the entirety of the gun’s magazine into the body of his assaulter. The massive man screamed and tried to speak, only managing to gurgle hideously as blood filled his lungs and leaked out of his mouth._

_With the last bullet, Haku brutally killed the man, and Zabuza could only lay still as a statue, watching his ward with a mixture of awe and horror._

_Haku slowly calmed down, and then, he looked at the gun in his hands, the blood of his assaulter covering the silver tip and splattered lightly over his pale hands. Zabuza watched the look on Haku’s face change from fury to utter horror at the realization that he had, once again, used a gun to violently kill a corrupt man in his life._

_His ward collapsed to the ground, sobbing and wailing at what he had done, and Zabuza made himself bolt from the ground and hold Haku close as the boy shook hard. Footsteps echoed down the tunnel, and multiple voices shouting in alarm drew closer as Zabuza’s fellow criminals finally showed up._

_“What the fuck is going-” he heard Baki start to say, before gasping at the sight before him._

_Zabuza turned his head around and saw Baki, wearing his bandana as always, together with Ringo, her scarlet hair pulled up in a practical bun, along with a few of their fellows, all looking down at the two of them in confusion and fright._

_About ten minutes later, after Ringo had given Haku a harmless but powerfully concentrated form of melatonin to help him sleep, the criminals gathered around and discussed in harsh whispers the tumultuous events of the night._

_“Zabuza, where the fuck did that man come from?” Ringo asked him, glaring at him in accusation. “And why did he go for your boy?”_

_“I don’t have a damn clue!” he retorted. “All of us have covered our tracks more than efficiently, so I don’t understand how this bastard managed to track this place down!”_

_“It must’ve been the boy,” Baki muttered, and they all turned to look at him as he spoke. “Haku must’ve unwittingly been the reason why he found this place. But that means…”_

_Baki shuddered, and asked Zabuza, “Why was he stalking your ward?!”_

_All eyes were once again on Zabuza, and he knew that there was no backing out of the coming talk. He grimaced, and Ringo’s eyes widened in terror as she understood where the conversation was headed._

_“N-no!” she said, barely preventing herself from crying out in anger. “Don’t tell me that-”_

_“Yeah,” Zabuza answered, and he snarled in disgust as he shot a glance at the corpse of Haku’s assaulter lying a foot away. “That bastard…raped Haku a few years ago.”_

_His words settled on the group, all of them going pale as sheet. Baki clutched at his face, and let out a shrill shriek of horror, bending over in pain as they all looked at him alarmedly._

_“Hey, what-” one of the other men asked, before Baki suddenly heaved, splattering the floor with the contents of his stomach._

_They all quickly scooted away from Baki, and Ringo snapped, “Watch where you aim, moron!”_

_She then gawked at him as Baki raised his face to reveal the streams of tears pouring down his face. Zabuza gulped as he felt his own tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, as he imagined the extreme horror Haku must’ve felt at waking up to see his assaulter towering over him._

_“ **A kid!** ” Baki screamed, sobbing as he ranted. “Haku’s just a kid! Rape is vile enough as it is, but to do that to a **kid**?! **WHAT KIND OF MONSTER DOES THAT?!** ” _

_At that, the rest of them couldn’t help but shed bitter, angry tears at Haku’s pain, Zabuza included. He wiped away harshly at his eyes, and glanced at his ward, who was still miraculously asleep despite the noise Baki had made._

_“Be sure you don’t wake him up,” he told Baki and the others. “He obviously needs to rest after what’s happened here.”_

_“Duh,” Ringo answered coldly. “And we need to dispose of this bastard’s body. I say we feed him to the sharks. Any objections?”_

_“None from me,” Zabuza said, glaring down at the man’s bloodied corpse._

_“Let him rot in the ocean!” Baki snarled, still weeping from the horrible knowledge of what Haku had suffered._

_A few hours later, Zabuza and Ringo had snuck out into the harbor and set the body of Haku’s assaulter unceremoniously adrift in a black trash bag, watching the carcass float away out of sight into the night._

_“Are you…ok, Zabuza?” she asked as they crept away towards the tunnels._

_“Hardly. I felt so powerless, with that monster on top of me. I could’ve died, and Haku…that monster would’ve…”_

_Zabuza shuddered harshly, and Ringo patted him on the back sympathetically._

_“Right, that’s only understandable. But keep in mind, the bastard’s dead.”_

_She looked momentarily befuddled, and told him, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…I’m honestly impressed with how quickly he snapped to defend you. That boy’s never struck me as a person who could hurt a fly, but it’s clear to me that, between the options presented before him, he would’ve rather committed violent murder than see his savior be taken from him.”_

_Zabuza said to her, “I wondered about that. Don’t tell anybody else this, but Haku once had to use a gun to save himself from his homicidal, racist pig of a father after he found out that his wife and child had Ainu heritage. Haku hates guns, but like you said, he had no qualms about using mine to destroy that monster before I could get harmed.”_

_“The look on his face when I saw him…Zabuza, it’s painfully clear to me that the boy isn’t cut out for our line of work. Don’t ever make him fight, ok?”_

_“Absolutely not. That was never my intention when I took him off the streets, and after tonight, I’ll ensure that he never has to use a weapon ever again. I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll kill whoever it takes so that he never gets hurt again.”_

_Ringo smirked satisfactorily and said, “Good. I’m curious to see how your bond with him…develops.”_

_She refused to say anything more on the matter._

_In the morning, as Zabuza sat beside him standing guard, Haku wearily woke up, still looking shaken by what had transpired. He saw Zabuza, and flung himself into the renegade’s lithely muscled torso, hugging him tightly._

_Zabuza, after a moment of surprise, held him back a bit awkwardly but sincerely, wrapping his powerful arms around Haku’s slim body, worried that if he held him too tightly, he could hurt him._

_The boy, after resting his head on Zabuza’s chest for a good minute, looked up into his face and told him, “Thank you for saving me last night, Mr. Zabuza. It means more to me than you know.”_

_“You saved **me** , Haku,” he told him. “If you hadn’t gunned that bastard down, I probably would’ve been beaten to death.”_

_Haku’s brown eyes narrowed in malice at the thought, and he snapped, “I’ll never let anybody take you away from me, Mr. Zabuza! Not after all you’ve done for me!”_

_Zabuza couldn’t help but blush at the intensity of Haku’s words, and Haku blushed too after seeing his cheeks turn crimson. Zabuza carefully ruffled the boy’s soft black hair, and Haku looked up at him in confusion as Zabuza took on a much softer tone._

_“Haku…you don’t need to call me ‘Mr. Zabuza’. ‘Zabuza’ is fine. Ok?”_

_After his words sunk in, Haku gave him his trademark angelic beam, and said to him, “Understood, Zabuza.”_

_They stood up together, Haku still leaning into his torso, and as they walked towards the exit of the tunnels, Zabuza spoke to him about the future._

_“From now on, let me do the fighting, ok? I know that you hate guns, and I know how to swiftly kill any opponent. I’ll keep us both safe, so that you don’t ever have to touch a weapon again.”_

_“Thank you, Zabuza,” Haku whispered wearily, clutching at his head. “I still have bad dreams about killing my father with that gun. I never want to touch one of those vile things ever again.”_

_“You’ve got it, boy. Leave it to me.”_

* * *

 

When the pain went away and the memory ceased blaring in his mind, Zabuza’s vision refocused to show Inari standing straight, gazing at him with an odd solemn expression.

“Now you remember, Momochi Zabuza,” he told the renegade. “Haku saved you not once, but **twice**.”

“You…you’re not really Inari, are you?” Zabuza asked the boy warily, knowing that Tazuna’s grandson couldn’t truly know the intimate details of his history with Haku.

“Of course not. This form was chosen to lead you around, as necessary. To guide you to facing the truth about yourself and Yuki Haku. Though of course, as you know, your journey is far from finished.”

The boy pointed behind him, and to Zabuza’s shock, the darkness and rain gradually disappeared, to be replaced by the swirling fog that had originally greeted him upon entering the town. With the slightly heightened visibility the atmosphere gave him, he was able to see the massive stone bridge looming up ahead.

“Go there, and allow yourself to face the one memory you’ve been running from this entire time,” the boy told him. “In order to move on, you must cease your denial of your pain and sorrow. This is the only way, Momochi Zabuza. If you want to heal and move on, you **must** allow yourself to confront that painful day. And once you do, your journey will continue in the streets of Paleville.”

With that, “Inari” disappeared into thin air, leaving Zabuza alone with the corpse. After pondering the nature of his helper, Zabuza walked forward towards the bridge, knowing deep inside that when he arrived, he was bound to face the memory of the skirmish on Naruto Bridge.

At the edge of the bridge, he stood as stoically as his nerves allowed him to, waiting for the power of the town to do its will. It only took a few moments before figures formed in the mist before him, and then, Momochi Zabuza beheld a brutally perfect rendition of what happened on that baleful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author Note: 
> 
> Hey guys! Thank you for reading the story so far, I really appreciate it.
> 
> I thought it would be prudent for me to discuss with you, the readers, why I chose to discuss sexual violence as a recurring side story so far in this fanfic.
> 
> First of all, I assure you that I am by no means a victim of sexual violence. Nobody has ever harmed me like Haku was harmed by that monster.
> 
> Please bear with me, because the real reason I’m writing about this is extremely uncomfortable.
> 
> Even though I’m a gay guy, I avoid yaoi manga/anime because, to be honest, I’m a prude, and I’m not interested in sex scenes, even if they’re between two gay guys. One of my best friends is well-versed in the yaoi universe, and has told me a great deal about how ridiculous some yaoi fangirls can be about certain tropes.
> 
> To my extreme disgust, she told me that she’s read some comments from fangirls on yaoi works containing non-con/rape as an upfront theme, where the fangirls say that they “love it”, or even…well, use the rape scene to get off.
> 
> The notion that anybody, guy or girl, thinks that anybody raping another person, or forcing them to engage in sexual acts against their will is erotically pleasing, infuriates me, especially as a gay guy. Whenever I hear about these comments, I can’t help but wonder if those same people would be just as gleeful if they watched these fictional rape scenes happen in real life.
> 
> That’s why I decided to write about this in my story; I want to show the reader that a young, fragile “uke” being raped is disgusting, horrific, and causes extreme pain that might never disappear. I wanted to make it clear how traumatic and damaging gay men being raped is, and how there’s nothing remotely attractive about it.
> 
> Shame upon everybody who thinks that sexual violence/abuse is “hot”. 
> 
> Again, thank you for reading my fanfic, and I hope you continue to enjoy it.  
> -nightwish435


	6. The Bridge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Mention of Past Rape and Graphic Violence

The night before Zabuza and Haku departed for the Land of Waves, a tiny island off the coast of Okinawa that held what would end up being their last destination together, Haku opened up to his partner about the reservations he couldn’t help but feel.

“Zabuza…that grimy old man, Gato, wants you to kill the bridge builder just so he can reign supreme over that island! This is wrong, we both know it!”

“I’m not out to kill Tazuna out of hatred, Haku,” Zabuza explained, trying to ignore the pangs of his conscious that affirmed what Haku was saying, “I’m doing this because we need money. We can’t keep living off of scraps here in Osaka. This is our chance to settle down at last, and put our financial worries at ease forever.”

“But still, I can’t stand this! Those people are trapped under Gato’s iron heel, and if you succeed with this assignment, you could end up permanently denying them the chance to escape his control!”

“It’s neither your fault or mine that the Land of Waves is struggling to survive, Haku. Let’s get going.”

They left Baki, Ringo and the others behind that night, never realizing that neither of them would see the gang ever again.

To Gato’s chagrin, one of the police departments in Osaka managed to catch wind of the assassination plot against the bridge builder Tazuna, who was working with volunteer craftsmen to create a bridge connecting the Land of Waves to Osaka. In response to the alert, the city sent Lieutenant Officer Hatake Kakashi and his three cadets, Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke to defend Tazuna’s life at all costs.

Zabuza attempted to kill the four officers during a brief skirmish on the outside of the island’s single city, a handful of days before the skirmish on the bridge. It would’ve ended with his death, had he not successfully played dead, and had Haku not distracted his opponents by using a fake call for help that led them away.

Haku took Zabuza away to their temporary hideout in the island woods, where he healed him and prepared his protector to fight against the cops once more. The time for the planned assassination was at hand, when Tazuna would be the single worker on the bridge later that week, to inspect the details that his novice helpers were bound to miss.

“I still have a very bad feeling about this, Zabuza,” Haku told him the morning before the attack, an ominous fog rolling in from the sea and gradually obscuring everything in sight. “It’s not this bizarre fog that’s giving me chills now.”

“Haku, I’ll be fine, so please stop worrying yourself so much,” he reprimanded the boy sternly. “We’re both too young to be worrying about such fatalistic rubbish.”

“Hardly. I’m barely 19 years old, and you’re practically middle-aged!”

“Oh hush,” Zabuza answered with a smirk, appreciative of Haku’s trademark sass. “I’m not **that** old, I’ve only just reached 30.”

When they set off for the bridge, Zabuza told Haku that there would be no need for the boy to intervene in the likely fight against the police. The renegade was overconfident of his ability to strike targets down in obscured conditions, and the fog didn’t hinder him as much as it did others.

On the bridge, Tazuna was guarded by the Lieutenant and his three cadets, all squinting in the mist as Zabuza crept forward, aching to gun Kakashi down. The memory of the vile ex-officer attempting to hurt Haku once more still burned an ugly image in his mind, and in his rage, Zabuza unwisely chose to attack the officer instead of the old man.

“ **YOU!** ” Kakashi snarled as Zabuza’s first bullet, deliberately aimed off to intimidate his enemy, made him snap to attention.

The three cadets desperately pulled Tazuna towards the opposite end of the bridge, as the two men capered around each other in a wild dance of aiming and shooting.

Kakashi snarled as they fought, and shouted, “You’re a monster, Zabuza, and I’ll strike you down here and now before you get your chance to harm Tazuna!”

“ **I’m** the monster?” Zabuza answered, sneering as one of his shots missed Kakashi by only two inches. “You police scum are fucking hypocrites, walking around as supposed instruments of justice, when all you do is harm innocent bystanders!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Kakashi said, his face failing to hide the sting of the accusation.

“The person I love the most was brutalized by a man like you, and I’ll never forgive you pieces of shit for causing such pain!”

Zabuza’s vision rapidly turned red with violent rage as his hatred for policemen overflowed, and soon, he was barely able to make out Kakashi’s face in the scarlet-tainted mist.

“ **THIS ENDS NOW, HATAKE KAKASHI!** ”

Before he could fire another shot, the Lieutenant blasted Zabuza’s handgun out of his grasp with a perfectly aimed bullet. Just like that, Zabuza was utterly defenseless, his fury transforming into deadly fear as Kakashi aimed at his heart.

“You’re right, you sick bastard,” Kakashi told him coldly, savoring the suspenseful moment as he slowly squeezed the trigger. “It ends now, with your death.”

Quickened footsteps echoed down the bridge, coming towards them at a rapid pace, and far away to their left, Zabuza heard the blonde brat cadet scream “ **No, don’t!** ”

He closed his eyes, and the instant Kakashi’s gun went off, he felt blood splatter over his chest, but no pain. Confusion took ahold of his senses as the female cadet shrieked in horror, prompting him to open his eyes at last.

There, standing between him and Kakashi, slender arms spread out as wide as possible, with Kakashi’s deadly bullet puncturing his lungs, was Haku.

_“What?!”_

Kakashi’s mouth hung wide open in alarm, his body still and unmoving. Both of them watched Haku shakily drop his arms and turn around, so that he could give Zabuza one last smile.

“I-I’m glad…that…I was finally able to return the favor…Zabuza…” the boy said softly, before collapsing to the ground with an echoing thud.

The life left Haku’s large brown eyes quickly, and in a matter of moments, he had ceased breathing.

“What…why…where did he come from?!” Kakashi gasped out, shivering violently as the horrific reality before them sank in.

_“I told him to stay away! I told him to not get involved! This…this can’t be happening!”_

“ **Aw, what a pity this turned out to be.** ”

Everybody turned to the right end of the bridge, where a large group of 10 rowdy bodyguards approached marching around Gato, the slimy businessman himself. The puny man waved a hand arrogantly, and his gang ceased moving, while he stepped forward in order to be better heard.

“Gato, what the Hell is this?” Zabuza snapped, already feeling an inkling of what was about to unfold.

“It’s simple, ‘Demon’,” Gato shouted, sneering coldly. “I’m done with you and this weak piece of trash you kept by your side for so long!”

Zabuza snarled viciously, aching for a gun to blast his treacherous employer’s head off as Gato continued to rant.

“I caught wind of the truth of who you are, Momochi Zabuza. You’ve gone around acting as the top alpha mercenary, but in reality, you and this brat are nothing but a pair of cock-sucking faggots. I’ve got no patience for scum like you in my entourage, and I’ll gladly have my men here wipe you out without further ado.”

Haku lay on the ground, gazing up at the sky with empty eyes as Zabuza shook with fury. The renegade turned to Kakashi, attempting to keep his cool, and spoke coldly to the Lieutenant.

“Our fight is over, Hatake Kakashi. Gato’s apparently fake promise of payment was the only reason I had for wanting Tazuna dead. Now that my employment is through, I have no longer have any reason to kill him. My apologies for the inconvenience.”

His opponent was only able to nod, Kakashi’s sight fixed on the corpse between them, gray eyes wide with terror at the killing he had unwittingly wrought.

Naruto shouted at Gato from afar, “ **You bastard!** You’re nothing but an arrogant piece of shit, and I’ll take you out here and now!”

Zabuza did his best to ignore the brat’s ranting as his fellow cadets desperately restrained him. The boy was nothing short of the utmost irritation, his volatile anger likely to get them all gunned down by the rifle-toting men at the other end of the bridge.

When he was successfully calmed down, Naruto starting snapping at Zabuza.

“What’re you just standing there for?! That asshole just insulted your partner, and mocked him in front of you! Aren’t you gonna do something?!”

“Shut it, brat!” Zabuza answered harshly, his back turned to the cadet as he stood facing Gato, plotting how to either kill the pig or escape with his life. “I don’t know where or how got this ‘gay’ thing from, but it means nothing to me.”

Naruto stood in shocked silence, until he screamed, “What are you talking about?!”

“As if I was gay for this boy! He was a homeless urchin that I picked up off the streets on a whim, nothing more. Anything else that Gato or you assert is nothing more than delusion.”

“You…you really mean that?” Naruto asked him, and Zabuza heard the boy take quick steps forward.

The raven-haired cadet snapped at Naruto, “Stop, you idiot! You’ll get us all killed!”

“Shut up, Sasuke!” Naruto shouted, now barely half a foot away from Zabuza. “This moron’s still my enemy, and I’m gonna put him in his place!”

Zabuza turned around to glare down at the brat, who was huffing and puffing with rising fury. Naruto’s icy blue eyes glared deep into Zabuza’s brown orbs. The silence was broken quickly by Naruto’s piercing rant.

“That guy-” Naruto yelled, pointing at Haku’s lifeless body, “Haku told me everything about the person who meant the world to him, the one who returned the happiness he thought he’d lost forever! Now I know, he was talking about **you** that whole time!”

The renegade turned away sharply so that the fuming cadet couldn’t see the look of alarm on his face. Naruto didn’t let up as he went on.

“Just yesterday, while I was walking around the forests on this island, I got lost, and wouldn’t have been able to find my way back if Haku hadn’t crossed paths with me. He sat down with me, and gave me a big talk on how protecting the person most important to you can give you a fighting will, a courage you never thought you could have!”

_“Haku…why did you choose to open up to a brat you barely know?!”_

“Haku told me about everything he’s been through! He told me about having to kill his bastard father because the asshole was an Ainu-hating racist, he told me about having to live on the streets with nobody willing to help him, and…he…told me…”

_“No, fuck, **no!** ” _Zabuza thought madly, knowing what would inevitably be brought up next.

Naruto’s voice went thick with rising tears, as he wailed, “He even told me about being raped by a police officer!”

Kakashi let out a low groan and covered his face in horror, falling to his knees and shuddering at the revelation his cadet provided. Naruto’s fellow cadets and Tazuna were stunned speechless at the tragic tale that was unfolding before them.

“ **That’s** why you wanted to kill me and my team so badly, isn’t it?!” Naruto screamed at Zabuza, who was doing his best to not allow the grief of the officers to affect him. “You want to blame all of us for the pain one monster put him through! Haku knew I was a cadet, yet he treated me with more compassion than any stranger I’ve ever met! He doesn’t hate policemen like you do, and you should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Shut up…” Zabuza muttered, feeling his own tears starting to bud at the corners of his eyes.

Behind him, Naruto began to sob as he continued to rant.

“Do you have any idea what you meant to this guy you’re denying?! You gave him hope for life when you rescued him from the streets! You made Haku realize that there was at least one person in this forsaken world who cares about him, especially when you fought hard to protect him from his bastard assaulter! **You reminded Haku what love was, and we both know sure as Hell that he did the same for you!** ”

_“Stop it!”_ Zabuza silently screamed, gritting his teeth and wishing for the berating to cease.

“How can you stand there and deny that Haku loved you, when he deliberately sacrificed himself to save your life? How dare you ignore the ultimate act of selfless love that he did for you?! You make me sick!”

_“Please, stop-”_

“I’m sick of self-homophobic morons like you, who go around acting all ‘manly’ and bullshit, mistreating guys like Haku who can’t hide their sexual truth from the rest of the world! You’re disgusting for wanting to avoid the simple truth that you two loved each other! Are you seriously that heartless?!”

Naruto whispered through his tears, “ **Haku wanted to spend the rest of his life with you, but chose to sacrifice that future just so you could live. For you to stand here, and try to ignore everything he did for you, everything you felt for each other…that’s…that’s…too painful to bear.** ”

That was the last straw for Zabuza’s grief, and as he heard Naruto collapse into sobbing, the renegade spoke up hoarsely through the sorrow choking him up.

“Kid…”

“Huh?”

Naruto paused in his grief and looked at Zabuza in awe as the criminal turned around, allowing the officers and Tazuna to see the thick tears now spilling down his face. Zabuza could only grit his teeth and weep as he made himself face the brat who had somehow managed to pry open the depths of his heart.

“ **D-don’t say…anything more…please.** ”

None of the people in front of him said anything, only watching in somber silence as Zabuza finally spoke up.

“You’re right, boy. Of course you’re right. Haku and I…loved each other. For the longest time, I wanted to pass it off as his gratitude towards me, and my protectiveness toward him in return. But as Haku told you, those base feelings developed into heartfelt, selfless love for each other, and he’ll always be the only one to ever enter my heart like that.”

To his right, Kakashi sobbed harshly, and despite the animosity that he had felt for the officer only minutes before, Zabuza couldn’t help but appreciate the raw empathy coming from him.

“I wanted to give Haku a future, free of pain, and free of the nightmares that his past put him through. That’s why I took on this assignment. I was going to use Gato’s supposed payment, his blood money, to get us out of the country, start over anew in America…get him the counseling he needed, and give him the chance at a proper education, too. But look…look at what that cost me!”

He screamed to them all, “ **Haku died because of my selfish, greedy desire!** ”

Tazuna bowed his head deeply, and feebly wiped away at his tears. Zabuza glanced at his former target, and shook his head bitterly.

“Haku tried so hard to make me see that wanting to kill an innocent old man, who only wants to help his people escape Gato’s filthy grasp, was a mistake. This must be the punishment I deserve for not taking him seriously. Maybe it’s the perfect justice, for me to become lonelier than I’ve ever been, after willing to make this island just as alone. For my indifference…for turning a blind eye to this island’s agony… **I’m sorry.** ”

He turned around, and knelt next to Haku’s body. Zabuza gazed down at his love, and tenderly placed a strong hand on Haku’s fragile face, caressing him softly.

“He was kind where I was cruel, he was merciful where I was heartless…and now, because I refused to ignore the pangs of his intuition, I’ve lost him.”

With one gentle movement, Zabuza shut Haku’s eyelids, giving the boy a far more peaceful appearance. It looked like he was merely asleep, dreaming happily of the future.

Zabuza said softly to Naruto, “ **Boy…I’m glad that I was able to face somebody like you**.”

He stood up, and laughed harshly to himself, earning a confused look from the heartbroken cadet. Zabuza wiped away his tears, looked wearily at Naruto as he spoke.

“You’re right after all, little cadet. It was wrong and pointless for me to try to deny my own feelings for Haku. These feelings are real, they’re genuine, and no matter how frightening it was at first, knowing full well that I’m not straight…having somebody by my side who loved me unconditionally was the biggest blessing I’ve ever received. And…I want to make it up to him, however I can. I want to give Haku justice.”

Naruto sniffled meekly, and asked, “How?”

“Boy…” Zabuza said to him softly, “If you’re willing, I’ll need to borrow your handgun.”

At first, the cadet hesitated, and Zabuza couldn’t blame him after he had tried to gun down his captain so violently. But Naruto nodded, unclipped the gun on his belt, and tossed it underhand to Zabuza, a knowing gleam in his blue eyes.

The instant he caught the gun, Zabuza clenched it with both hands and whirled about with a hideous snarl on his face, contorting his grief-stricken expression into one of animalistic fury. Gato saw the malice in the renegade’s stance and fled away as fast as his short legs could carry him, calling out for his thugs to attack.

“What are you waiting for? Get him!” Gato shrieked, and all 10 of them whooped and hollered, thrusting their rifles into the air as Zabuza charged straight at them.

“What can a faggot like you do against 10 of us?!” one of them shouted, and then, Zabuza began his barrage.

With three perfectly timed headshots, Zabuza took down a trio of bodyguards, sending the rest of them into frightened disarray. They scrambled to ready their rifles, but before they could so much as aim, he had thrown himself into their midst, and continued to brutally mow them down.

Using another headshot, he killed the man next to him, seized the assault rifle in his arms, and used it to gun the rest of the thugs. In a matter of minutes, the Demon had taken down all 10 bodyguards, leaving Gato to scream and run for his life.

“Get away from me, monster!” the slimy businessman shouted as he fled for the edge of the bridge.

Zabuza smirked coldly and used Naruto’s handgun to destroy the man’s kneecaps, sending him to the ground, shrieking in pain as more rounds were emptied into his body. As Zabuza walked closer, taking his time with causing is traitorous employer as much pain as possible, Gato looked up at him and offered a pathetic final plea.

“Please! I’ll give you anything you want, I’ll give you all the money in my name! Just don’t kill me!”

“ **Money?** ” Zabuza asked coldly, kneeling and thrusting his face in front of Gato’s leering at him and enjoying the pure fear radiating off his body. “What amount of money can bring back Haku? What amount of money could satisfy a ‘cock-sucking faggot’ like myself, when me following your order lead to Haku’s death?”

He cocked the gun under Gato’s chin, and watched the bastard wriggle like a helpless worm on the ground.

“N-no, please!” Gato screamed, and then, Zabuza swiftly pulled the trigger.

With a bang, gore splattered the stones around them, and Gato collapsed on his back, lifeless at last. Zabuza slowly stood up to his full height, and looked behind him in confusion at the sound of many people murmuring lowly.

Next to Tazuna and the officers stood what must’ve been the entirety of the island’s meager population, gawking and pointing at him, after evidently witnessing his brutal massacre of the man who had enslaved their country for so long. All of them were bearing weapons of various kinds, from meat cleavers to even a few guns here and there.

Standing at the forefront was Inari, Tazuna’s angsty grandson, looking the most shocked out of the entire bunch of villagers. Zabuza grimaced, vaguely remembering Gato gloating to him and Haku about the day he brutally crucified the boy’s noble stepfather, Kaiza, in the village square, as a warning that he wouldn’t tolerate subversion.

_“Looks like this was justice for all, then.”_

His eyes fell on Haku’s body lying up ahead, and Zabuza slowly walked back to his partner’s side, feeling his tears rapidly building up once more. Up above in the sky, to the surprise of everybody on the bridge, soft flakes of snow fell out of the cloudy sky right over Haku’s body lying in repose. Zabuza looked up at the snow as he drew closer to Haku, and felt his chest tighten with grief.

_“Haku…my beloved Haku…are you…crying?”_

When he came to Haku’s side, he motioned for Naruto to take his handgun back, and the cadet took it solemnly, tearing up just like he was. With the gun out of his hands, Zabuza was free to lift Haku’s slender, fragile body up in his strong arms, kneeling next to him as he held his love close.

The entirety of the crowd stood silent and still, watching somberly as Zabuza raised his head to the heavens above. A single ray of sunlight peeked out through the clouds, casting a golden, divine-like gleam on Haku’s peaceful face.

Zabuza’s whole body shook harshly, and at last, every bit of grief that he had been fighting to contain ever since that awful moment came rushing out of him all at once. He wailed a single plea to the sky, hoping and wishing desperately that wherever he was, Haku could hear him.

“ **Take me with you!** ” Zabuza screamed, aching to go where he was certain his lover had gone. “ **Don’t leave me here alone!** ”

At that, the entire crowd collapsed into their own sorrow, their hearts unable to withstand the intensity of Zabuza’s agony. Kakashi wept the most out of the bystanders, clutching at himself and sobbing, the horror of his unwitting kill tearing him apart.

In the days that followed, every single person who had witnessed the supernatural snow falling in the middle of August would attest to the heartbreaking symbol they saw that day. Whether or not it was a coincidence, a snowflake landed perfectly on the corner of Haku’s eye, and when it melted, it looked just like a gentle tear.  


	7. A Meeting with Alessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Suicidal Thoughts and Mention of Rape

Silent Hill’s rendition of that horrific day on the bridge faded away, leaving Momochi Zabuza collapsed on the ground, sobbing and wailing as the pain of Haku’s loss overwhelmed him.

All he could do was weep, alone in the swirling fog, not a single monster in sight. It seemed the town had, in its own mysterious sense of benevolence, set aside some time for the renegade to recover.

More than anything else, it was the memory of holding Haku’s lifeless body in his arms and begging the boy to take him alongside to the afterlife that hurt the most.

_“I’ve never wanted to die as badly as I did in that moment,”_ Zabuza thought, his chest heaving from the weight of his grief. _“Haku was my biggest reason for living, and when I lost him so suddenly like that…it shocks me that I didn’t try to end my own life on that bridge.”_

Time came to a seeming stop in the midst of the fog, and after what seemed like an eternity to him, Zabuza was finally able to stand up. He wiped away at his eyes, and gazed at the bridge before him, recalling what the note in Brookhaven Hospital had commanded him to do.

_“Apparently, I’m fated to travel into ‘Paleville’, the northern half of this strange town. But…what exactly am I supposed to find there? Hell, for that matter, where should I start there first?”_

He took out his map of Silent Hill, and ran his eyes over the scope of Paleville, which was made of three separate districts: the Resort Area, Central Silent Hill, and Old Silent Hill. On further glance, Zabuza that he was in for long walk, because even the Resort Area, the westernmost district of Paleville that seemed easily accessible from South Vale was off by several miles.

_“Maybe I’ll run into that slimy bastard Kabuto. Or maybe…I’ll see Yugao again. Is she safe? I haven’t seen her anywhere in this town since I met her in the graveyard. Honestly, I’m worried about her. She’s gotta be hiding something like I’ve been…I can only hope that it’s not something violent like what happened at the bridge.”_

The bridge loomed before him, and Zabuza made himself proceed, knowing that the town was finished showing him the vision of the brutal past. His feet were on autopilot, and Zabuza continued to reminisce about his history with Haku.

_“Like that vicious cadet told me, I should never have tried to deny the love Haku and I had for each other. Maybe I was afraid of admitting that I’m not straight. Or maybe I just really didn’t want to open up about something that we both kept private.”_

_“And honestly, I don’t see myself as ‘gay’. Come to think of it, Haku’s the only person I’ve ever had any genuine feelings for. I’m probably what the kids these days call ‘demisexual’; the only type of person I can fall in love with is the one I bond with as a best friend.”_

He crossed the bridge and continued to walk, as he recalled another memory with Haku that would be forever tender.

_“How did I manage to lie to myself, Haku, and that boy when I know how far the two of us took our love? I still remember…the night he turned 18, and became legal…he asked me to be his first and only.”_

* * *

 

  _“Well Zabuza, we’re alone now.”_

_Baki, Ringo and the others had vanished into the night on their own separate missions, leaving Zabuza and Haku to themselves until the morning. The two of them stood by each other quietly, weary after a turbulent night of celebration for Haku’s 18 th birthday._

_“I really like Ringo’s gift, you know?” Haku told him, caressing the soft blue kimono that she had purchased with her mission earnings. “It’s…beautiful. And the color reminds me of a frozen lake, perfect for skating on a frosty winter night. I love it.”_

_“It suits you perfectly, Haku. Honestly, I’m impressed with Ringo buying that for you. Must’ve cost her an arm and a leg.”_

_“No kidding! I wonder how long she saved up for this…”_

_Haku carefully put on his new kimono, a simple but elegant_ irotomesode _with a lovely snowflake design below the waist. Ringo had no doubt chosen the kimono because of Haku’s early January birthday._

_It fit him perfectly, and Haku blushed softly as he gazed at his form. Zabuza noted that for some reason, Haku had refused to tie it together with the sash, and his partner looked up at him with a nervously bit lip._

_“I…have a favor to ask of you, Zabuza,” Haku said softly, his cheeks now burning crimson. “There’s a certain special something that I’d like to ask from you, especially now that I’m 18.”_

_“…Haku?” Zabuza’s cheeks started to flush similarly as he quickly realized what was being asked of him._

_Haku stepped forward softly, and asked him, “Zabuza…would you be willing to take my virginity tonight?”_

_Zabuza gawked down at him, and blustered as he tried to form a cohesive response. Haku fumbled with his hands as he waited for him to answer._

_“H-Haku, I…I…well…”_

_“Zabuza, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, I completely understand-” Haku started to say, before Zabuza desperately waved his hand to assure him._

_“N-no, I…I **do** want to…but…Haku… **I don’t want to hurt you like that bastard did!** ”_

_He watched equally nervously as Haku squeezed his eyes shut, trying to fight off incoming tears, and breathed deeply._

_“He **did** hurt me, Zabuza,” Haku answered, “but I will **never** say that he took my virginity from me. What that monster took from me was my joy, my hope…my sense of self-worth. But all of that and more, you’ve given back to me with your selfless protectiveness of me. You’ve given me happiness when I thought I could never be happy ever again, and for that Zabuza…and so, so much more… **I want you to be my one. You, and only you.** ”_

_Zabuza was utterly flustered, and humbled by Haku’s declaration. Ever since the two of them had fought and killed Haku’s disgusting attacker, they had bonded deeply over the following years, opening up to each other on deep levels. It seemed that Ringo had predicted correctly after smugly hinting to Zabuza that night that the two of them would become this close._

_And in his heart, Zabuza knew that their feelings for each other were genuinely true._

_“Haku, I know…that you and I trust each other completely, and I know that you’re the only person in this entire world who I’d ever want by my side. That being said, are you…sure about this?”_

_Haku beamed up at him, and told him, “I’m beyond sure about this, Zabuza. You’re the only man in whose arms I’ll ever feel safe, and on a cold winter’s night like this, there’s no place I’d rather be. What that bastard did to me was a supreme act of physical hatred that was purely selfish in motivation. But you, Zabuza? What you’ve done for me has always been selfless and filled with love. I want to return that to you in this way, and I know that your love tonight will help me close up the wound I’ve been carrying for so long.”_

_He shyly moved his hands to undo his kimono and underlaying clothing, and Zabuza grimaced guiltily as he felt libido surge within him. Haku noticed his change in expression, and placed a small hand on his muscular arm in assurance._

_“Zabuza, please, it’s ok. I want you to see me completely vulnerable.”_

_Zabuza gulped and told him, “O-ok. I just…I’ve never made love…the way most guys…”_

_At that, Haku shuddered, and told him sharply, “I don’t ever want to experience that ever again. I was forced to lie under him as he…thrust into me…painfully. Zabuza, it was so painful, and I didn’t experience one bit of pleasure from it.”_

_“I absolutely understand. So, Haku, how would you like me to…uh…?”_

_Haku nodded and said to him, “I know of a much safer, painless way to make love that most other men shun because they deem it as an ingenuine act of love making. All we need to do, Zabuza, is wrap each other up and…well, come close together.”_

_“…I see.”_

_Zabuza slowly removed his own shirt, exposing his powerful, sleek torso, eliciting a giggle from Haku. The renegade winked at him affectionately, undeniably happy that they were easing themselves into a moment of genuine love._

_In a minute, the two of them stood bare together, and Zabuza carefully offered Haku his large, powerful hands to grab. Haku took them and used them for support as he wrapped his slender legs around the renegade’s waist._

_Immediately, the two of them gasped at the sensation of touching each other, and Zabuza looked deep into Haku’s eyes, feeling one last uncertain pang of fear that he could end up hurting the boy he cared so much about._

_“Are you sure this is ok?” Zabuza asked Haku, and in response, the boy gently caressed his face._

_“Of course, Zabuza. I trust you, and I’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long. Are you ready?”_

_Zabuza’s chest heaved with powerful emotion and longing, as he answered firmly, “I’m ready.”_

_They kissed each other, Haku’s soft lips matching perfectly with Zabuza’s strong, firm mouth. As they kissed, Zabuza slowly moved his hips in a swaying motion, eliciting pleasant gasps from Haku as the boy shifted about cleverly, giving Zabuza the same sensation._

_Haku moved gracefully like a reed dancing in the wind, and Zabuza’s powerful muscles rippled like water as they continued to make love._

_Although their gentle movements only lasted for a couple of minutes, to both of them, the entire thing felt like an everlasting dream. When they came, both gasping quietly, Zabuza lowered them to the ground and leaned against the tunnel wall, amazed at their first true experience with love making._

_“Thank you…Zabuza…” Haku said to him softly, his eyelids gradually closing._

_Zabuza grasped about for a nearby blanket, and when he found one, he tossed it over themselves as Haku fell asleep in his embrace._

_The renegade watched his lover for a good hour, smiling peacefully at the beauty of that night, before he, too, drifted off into sweet dreams._

* * *

 

After a long hour of walking, Zabuza found himself on West Sandford Street, leaving Nathan Avenue and the boundary of South Vale far behind. Looming in the distance was a colorful array of rides and attractions, which he knew had to belong to the Lakeside Amusement Park, a key location in Silent Hill’s Resort Area.

_“This place might have more clues, if I’m lucky. There shouldn’t be any harm in exploring, right?”_

He approached an archway with the name of the park on top, composed of glowing neon letters. Standing underneath it was a young girl wearing a blue school uniform that looked almost Japanese in style. She gazed at Zabuza with unnerving blue eyes as he walked closer, and when he had drawn close enough, she spoke.

“There is nothing for you to find in the Amusement Park, Momochi Zabuza,” she said, sounding ominous and distant.

Zabuza flinched at the tone in her voice and asked her, “And who are you?”

“My name is Alessa Gillespie.”

“Alessa? What the Hell are you doing here, Alessa? Do you have any idea how dangerous this place is?!”

To his shock, her face fell at his words, and it looked like she was on the verge of tears. Alessa shook her head sadly, and looked around them, taking in the landscape, along with the buildings of Paleville in the distance.

“I know, Zabuza. I know how dangerous this place is. I’m one of Silent Hill’s victims, and my pain…is what turned this city into the abomination it is today.”

“Huh?”

“My apologies, that’s a story for another time. I didn’t come here to reminisce, I came here to guide you per the town’s need.”

Zabuza involuntarily shuddered, remembering dealing with the image of Inari who had turned out to be just another creation of the town, and nodded at her to continue.

Alessa said to him, “As the town told you, the final part of your journey here is meant to continue in the depths of Paleville, but not necessarily the Resort Area. Whether I wanted to be or not, I’ve become synchronized with the town’s will, and as such, I inherently know that you’re meant to visit two locations in this district that I despise: Alchemilla Hospital and…my home.”

“Your home? Whatever for?”

“The final step. I will help you understand what you must do there when you’re guided to that place by the town. It won’t be for a while, seeing as my home lies near the northernmost entrance of Silent Hill. Now then, let me warn you about Alchemilla.”

Alessa frowned bitterly, and explained, “While I was alive, I spent the last half of my years bound in the basement of that forsaken hospital, a victim of my mother’s insane fanaticism, and the malpractice of the Director at that time, Michael Kaufmann. The town knows what I suffered there, and it still uses that horror to confront the wanderers who venture into the hospital’s dark hallways. It is there that you will discover some disturbing truths about somebody else in this town…the man who tricked you, Yakushi Kabuto.”

“ **Kabuto!** ” Zabuza snarled. “Where is he?! I’ll kill him for what he did!”

“At this moment, he is about to enter Alchemilla, and the town will besiege him with the brutal truth of his crimes. He was in this park not too long ago, and was led into the underground church here, where he discovered something utterly insidious about the cult of this town.”

Zabuza quirked a brow at her and asked, “This town has a cult?”

“Yes,” she answered, and the shadow of fury crossed her face as she went on. “My mother, Dahlia Gillespie, was the leader of the cult, before her vile plans got herself killed. You see, the Order, this town’s vile religion, doesn’t worship the one true God of Christianity. It worships a female deity that is believed can be reborn by means of a female vessel…birth, that is to say. My own mother thought I’d be the perfect vessel for the rebirth of her ‘god’, which I learned was nothing more than the embodiment of evil.”

“Holy shit! But what does Kabuto have to do with that?”

“Kabuto, as you know, is a liar. He’s lied to himself, his country, and his victims about what he does for a living. He is an adherent of the Order, and this town has forced him to see the truth about what he’s been worshipping.”

“Victims…”

It was then that Zabuza recalled the countless graves with female Japanese names on them in the graveyard on the outskirts of South Vale. The connection was made, and it took a great deal of willpower to fight off his rising nausea.

Alessa grimaced at him, and told him, “Then you already know. I’m sorry, Zabuza, because as the one who will have to confront Kabuto about what he’s done, you’ll have to see how Silent Hill has recreated his nightmares and delusions.”

He hesitantly asked her, “Wait, so he hasn’t been caught in heavy rain like I have? No dark blue, blood splattered halls?”

“No. I won’t go into details to spare your senses, but because of the extreme amount of blood on his hands…his nightmare here is far more blood-soaked. And I have no doubt that you’ll see a bit of that nightmare when you venture into Alchemilla.”

_“That bastard is more twisted than I originally imagined.”_

Zabuza shuddered again, and told her, “I appreciate you warning me in advance. But let me ask you…Alessa, are you…dead? A ghost, even?”

She shook her head, and sadly explained, “No, Zabuza. It’s trickier than that. I ensured my own rebirth at the end of my pain those years ago. I was able to start over as an infant, carried away in the arms of the heroic man who helped me finally wake up from my own nightmare. And…”

Zabuza felt his heart swell a bit as he watched Alessa beam at him brightly, and tell him, “ **I found the father I’ve never had in him, that man, Harry Mason.** ”

“I get it. Are you a dream, then?”

“I suppose you could say that. Yes, at this moment, my reincarnation is safely asleep under the watchful, loving eyes of my savior. My soul was called here by the town itself to offer you guidance, especially for you, a heartbroken man who knows the loss of the person he cared about the most. I’m sorry for the trauma you’ve suffered, Momochi Zabuza. What you’ve lived through is my single darkest fear.”

Zabuza told her wearily, “I hope you never experience that, Alessa. Haku’s loss nearly destroyed me. I’m hoping that whatever this town is doing to me, it’ll end in peace of some sort.”

“It will,” she assured him. “I’m certain of it. As for me, I wish every night for Harry’s safety. Zabuza…if I ever lose him…should that vile ‘Order’ lay a finger on him…”

At that moment, Zabuza’s mind reeled with violent imagery as Alessa’s rage suddenly surged. In his mind’s eye, he saw blood and fire swallowing up Silent Hill, heard a shrill feminine shriek of fury, and on a befouled tile wall no doubt belonging to Brookhaven Hospital, he read violent words etched in blood:

_“WHAT A WONDERFULL WORLD”_

“…I’ll enjoy watching this city burn in the fires of my pain once more.”

Zabuza gawked at her, and Alessa sheepishly bit her lip, saying to him, “My apologies. I’ve told you too much information that won’t be of use to you, and I’ve delayed you long enough as it is. Goodbye for now, Momochi Zabuza. When we meet again, it will be at my childhood home.”

With that, Alessa faded away into thin air, leaving Zabuza utterly shaken and unnerved. He turned away, and continued his journey, his eyes set towards Central Silent Hill in the distance, where Alchemilla Hospital and the slimy rogue Kabuto stood waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author Note:
> 
> Thank you all again for reading this! On a whimsical note, I wanted to let you all know that for the love scene between Zabuza and Haku, specifically the part where Haku tells him that he's the only man he'd ever want to be with, I listened to the piece "Only You" from Silent Hill 1's soundtrack for inspiration. You can listen to it here:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwpiHykfs-I


	8. The Truth About Baki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Zabuza arrived in Central Silent Hill on Crichton Street, and glanced at the white-washed walls of Alchemilla Hospital looming to his right. A massive “DO NOT ENTER” sign had been laid across Koontz Street, preventing him from journeying into the hospital to find Kabuto and beat his treacherous behind. He continued to walk down Crichton, thinking about the other two participants in the town’s twisted mind game.

_“I can’t wait to get my hands on Kabuto and make that bastard pay for trying to have me killed back in Brookhaven. Especially after learning from that girl that he’s likely done some horrible stuff...but what, exactly? And where the hell is Yugao? I haven’t seen her since talking with her in the graveyard.”_

A hideous squelching sound could be heard as he neared the end of the street and approached the Police Station, looking particularly decrepit and greyed. Zabuza tiptoed near the intersection of Crichton and Sagan, and shuddered at the sight of the mob before him.

A cluster of impish creatures wearing the same _oni_ mask as the town’s incarnation of Haku’s rapist were surrounding a bloodied, disfigured corpse, shrieking with inhuman fury as they repeatedly stabbed into the grisly flesh with what looked to be rusted _tantou_ swords. From his standpoint, Zabuza could see scores of stab wounds on the corpse, and it was clear that the creatures had no intention of stopping.

Zabuza grimaced upon seeing that the masks they were wearing had crimson streaks pouring out of the fanged _oni_ mouth, like they had hacked up blood while screaming in rage. He bolted across the street to the front door of the station, and glanced behind him to see that the things hadn’t at all reacted to him, they were so intent on massacring the corpse before them.

The station was pitch dark, except for the meek beam of Zabuza’s flashlight waving around as he glanced around. To his right was the bureau’s dilapidated secretary desk, records and notes scattered across the rotten wood. There were three packages of gun ammunition lying randomly next to the records, which filled him with immense relief. Zabuza approached the foremost record and carefully read it as he reloaded his gun with the bullets and pocketed the rest.

_“The Mystery of Gucci’s Death Solved?”_

_So much violence and death happened all those years ago, during our attempt to root out the monsters behind the distribution of PTV in Silent Hill. Both the anti-drug mayor and Officer Gucci died of “heart attacks”. The main coroner theory was that the stress and exhaustion of our combined efforts to put an end to the epidemic did them in._

_Bullshit._

_I might not be superstitious, but I’m calling foul play of a different kind after we learned more about those damned cultists, the idiots who call their twisted religion “The Order”. I suspect they pulled some sort of wacko voodoo to shut both the mayor and Gucci up, since those two were the most prominent fighters against the distribution of the drug._

_But it seems that the bastards responsible for their deaths may have gotten their comeuppance after all. The bizarre disappearance of Dr. Kaufmann and that insane woman, Dahlia Gillespie back then makes me wonder if one, they were secretly Order members, and thusly, if they somehow died as a result of their evildoing. Sounds like divine justice to me._

_I hope we root out the last of those mongrels and obliterate the Order entirely. Silent Hill has enough creeps in it already. We don’t need, and we sure as hell don’t want cult lunatics running around trying to bring about their version of doomsday._

He stepped away and shook his head in disgust, remembering what Alessa had said about her mother and the Order’s plan to use her to rebirth whatever “god” they worshipped.

_“Lunatics indeed. Hopefully I don’t have to encounter any of them while I’m still here.”_

Before he stepped away, he saw the image of a familiar face pasted on what looked to be a death report. Zabuza did a double take as he realized that the man in the picture was none other than Baki. He read the report with panic, fully realizing that the town was revealing his fellow criminal’s apparent death.

_“Violent Murder: Hitman Known as ‘Baki’Found Dead in Osaka”_

_The murderous criminal known as “Baki” was found dead in an alleyway of Osaka, brutalized and facially unrecognizable. The coroner who took the body in was only able to identify him by using his dental records, because the body resembled more of a hacked and slashed lump of meat than a human._

_At this time, the perpetrator can’t be identified, and the police have been unable to use any sort of tracing techniques, due to the utter lack of DNA found at the site of the murder. It seems that whoever committed the crime both had immense forensic knowledge, and used that knowledge to ensure that not even a strand of their hair would be found at the site. Thus, this was likely a premeditated murder._

_It goes without saying that the motive in this murder was rage-filled revenge. Nothing else could’ve brought the murderer to kill Baki so violently._

“B-Baki’s **dead**?!” Zabuza gasped as he took in the horrifying news. “This is dated only two weeks ago...which means he was killed not long after I fled the country...but who...?”

And then, the connections fell into place in his mind, and Zabuza shuddered violently as he recalled the residual malice in Yugao’s voice as she told him about the man who had murdered her fiance. It was now evident to him that Silent Hill was using the mob of fiends outside the station as a violent depiction of how Baki had been murdered.

 _“That woman...that fucking hypocrite! This means that_ **_she’s_ ** _the one who-“_

“AAAAAAH!’

Zabuza flinched as he heard the female shriek coming from the office door to his left, where he smelled the nasty iron-thick stench of blood leaking from beyond the rotted wood. He ran forward and kicked the door down, to behold none other than ex-officer Yugao cowering in the corner of a gore-splattered room, with a shrieking masculine monster towering over her.

The “man” looming in the middle of the room was adorned with a loose-hanging black body bag that coroners used to tuck away the corpses they dealt with. Ebony blood was spilling everywhere around the creature from underneath its bag as it swayed on the spot, and Zabuza grimaced at the sight of its maw, filled with decayed, blood-splattered fangs.

Yugao stared up at him in paralyzing terror, her eyes wide with fright as she held out the same rust-tainted _tantou_ that the fiends outside were using to brutalize the corpse. Zabuza sneered down at her unsympathetically, aching to give her a tongue-lashing and put her in her place. He turned to the creature as it pivoted around to snarl at him, and readied his gun.

_“Out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll gun this monstrosity down. But Yugao’s going to own up this time.”_

It screamed as it lunged at him, and Zabuza calmly emptied an entire magazine into its body, knocking it back and making it squirm in agony. The town’s rendition of Zabuza’s fellow criminal continued to flounder on the ground for several seconds before curling up into a fetal position and ceasing movement.

Zabuza turned to Yugao, still crouching in the corner of the gory office and clearly terrified of him. He glared at the sword in her hand, and then knelt forward, bending his face towards her, knowing fully that she didn’t have the nerve to swing the _tantou_ at him.

“That’s the murder weapon in your hand, isn’t it, **Officer**?” he asked softly but sinisterly.

At that, Yugao flung the sword to the ground, bolted from the office with a mad wail, and Zabuza heard the front doors bang open and shut as she fled.

“That’s what I thought.”

There wasn’t a shred of pity in him for the widowed ex-officer as he stepped out of the bloody office and towards the station’s front doors. His contempt for Yugao’s blatant hypocrisy twisted his lips into a scowl, and he ran over the details he had just learned about the full story of her past.

 _“So, it seems that she used her knowledge of criminals and forensics to first hunt him down, no doubt waiting for him to walk into that alley, and then violently kill him by using that sword of hers. What a madwoman. I absolutely understand wanting revenge, but at least_ **_I_ ** _left Gato’s corpse relatively intact, unlike her swordsmanship.”_

When he stepped outside, he saw that the fiends had disappeared, leaving their handiwork in the middle of Sagan for him to fully observe. He shuddered at the sight of scores of rabid sword wounds all over the corpse, leaving it utterly unrecognizable just as the report had detailed. Yugao was nowhere in sight, having presumably fled far away from the scene.

_“Well, this was...disturbing, to say the least. But I still need to find Kabuto and get even. Time to check out the hospital again.”_

He traversed back down Crichton, and when he came to the corner of the street with Koontz, he saw that the blockade had mysteriously disappeared, allowing him entrance to Alchemilla. Zabuza walked towards the hospital, passing through the open iron gates at the entrance, and up the steps to the front entrance. A much more intense stench of blood was coming from the other side of the door, and Zabuza recalled Alessa’s description of the blood on Kabuto’s hand that Silent Hill had graphically replicated.

 _“I’m going to put that bastard in his place!”_ Zabuza angrily thought as he pushed open the door and stepped inside.


	9. The Blood on Kabuto's Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of Human Experimentation and Abuse

Sure enough, the hallways of Alchemilla Hospital were drenched in crimson blood, and Zabuza gagged as he gazed around. It appeared that the town had selectively transformed the hospital into the manifestation of Kabuto’s mysterious transgression, without forcing the rest of Silent Hill to comply. Zabuza could see four-pronged sets of thin scratch marks etched into the walls around him, reminiscent of somebody desperately trying to claw their way out of a trap.

_“What...the_ **_fuck_ ** _did Kabuto do?!”_ Zabuza thought as he grabbed a tattered copy of the hospital map from the secretary desk to his left, searching for possible locations for the traitorous wretch.

On the 2nd floor of the hospital was a room marked as a massive Operating Theatre, with a marking on the map noting that there was a circular ramp in the room accessible from the 3rd floor. Zabuza sneered, knowing that such a wide, impressive room was no doubt the place an egotistical maniac like Kabuto had to be. He bolted down the hall and around the corner towards the stairs leading upwards, and passed the Medicine Room, partially visible thanks to its ajar door. Zabuza gave it a side glance and paused in confusion at the bizarre jars he could see.

What appeared to be vastly mutated snakes were contained in jars of variously colored liquids, lined up on the shelves of the Medicine Room, which was drenched in blood like the rest of Alchemilla. The snakes had multiple eyes, limbs, and unnatural sizes, all the obvious result of experimentation. Zabuza made himself step away and continue walking towards the stairs, feeling a wave of nausea rising up within him.

_“Somebody did something messed up to those snakes. But who?...And for that matter,_ **_why_ ** _?”_

He steadily ascended the stairs, still gagging on the thick stench of blood permeating the hospital. When he arrived at the upper floor, Zabuza saw a bulletin board to his left with various news articles and notes pinned to it. One of them was about the death of a Japanese man named Maenari Nobuo. Zabuza flinched when he realized that he was reading about Kabuto’s biological research supervisor.

 

_“Lies Exposed: Death of ‘Orochimaru’”_

_The police in Kyoto cornered “Orochimaru”, the alias used by researcher Maenari Nobuo to protect his identity, in his main underground facility, and ultimately killed him when he attempted to harm the officers with various chemical traps on hand. Thankfully, all of the officers escaped without so much as a scratch on them due to the descriptive warnings given to them about the facility by Mitarashi Anko, a young girl and would-be victim of Orochimaru._

_Currently, the police and federal government of Japan are scouring the nation for the whereabouts of Yakushi Kabuto, Orochimaru’s right hand man and accomplice in the unspeakable horrors that the once-famed researcher has committed against so many innocents._

 

Zabuza’s rage flared again as it slowly dawned on him what Kabuto’s crime had to be, and he ran his eyes over the 2nd article pinned to the bulletin board.

 

_“The Legend of Gekkou Hayate: a Testimony from Mitarashi Anko”_

 

_Kyoto’s police department will forever cherish Captain Gekkou Hayate, the man who ultimately ensured the downfall of the vile man “Orochimaru”, once trusted by all of Japan as a famous biological researcher. Although Captain Hayate was tragically murdered by Baki, a mercenary eventually discovered to have been hired by Orochimaru and his accomplice in a vain effort to prevent the Captain from alerting the government to his crimes, Captain Hayate succeeded in exposing the truth, with the help of Mitarashi Anko._

 

_Miss Mitarashi was able to escape Orochimaru’s clutches when Captain Hayate caught on to the S.O.S. signals the girl was able to cunningly release while in Orochimaru’s clutches, in the underground facility where he would eventually be gunned down by police. When the Captain had successfully delivered Miss Mitarashi to safe place where her captors wouldn’t be able to find her, she filled Captain Hayate in on what Orochimaru had been doing behind his mask of professional work, and also named his assistant, Yakushi Kabuto, as a gleefully willing participant in the horrid experiments being carried out in the facility._

 

_Ironically, at least in regards to Orochimaru’s desperate desire to keep his evildoing hidden from the rest of the country, his murder of Captain Hayate confirmed Miss Mitarashi’s account, and was what ultimately pushed the Feds into approving the police of Kyoto’s desire to storm the facility._

 

_Japan will never forget Captain Hayate’s martyism, and Miss Mitarashi has made it publicity clear that she owes her life and everlasting gratitude to his selfless heroism._

 

Despite his residual fear at the mere mention of Captain Hayate as an ex-criminal, Zabuza couldn’t help the tears of awe and appreciation at what the policeman had accomplished. His contempt for Yugao was momentarily softened as he accepted why she had been so vicious about getting revenge on Baki.

_“It makes sense, even though she’s still a hypocrite. Like this article states, their cowardly move to have Baki kill Hayate was probably the biggest mistake they made...and it ultimately cost this ‘Orochimaru’ his life. Going out of their way to have a genuine hero like Hayate murdered clearly caused some serious karma to blow up in their faces.”_

He glared down the hall, where the beam of his flashlight illuminated a set of massive double doors hiding the Operating Room beyond. His senses told him that Kabuto was lurking somewhere in the room beyond, and Zabuza was aching to force the truth about Orochimaru’s crimes out of the weasel, by any means necessary. Without wasting anymore time on thoughts, Zabuza stormed down the hall and shoved the doors forward, the worn, bloodied metal creaking violently as it swung inward.

Sure enough, there the scoundrel was, standing in the middle of the room, paralyzed with fear as he stared warily up at the dozens of shadowy entities lining the upper railing. Zabuza could see that Kabuto’s entire body was soaked from head to feet in blood, his hair matted and pasted to his deranged face. Of particular notice were his palms, soaked completely scarlet.

Zabuza could tell that Kabuto was so fixated on the things above that he hadn’t yet noticed the newcomer walking in. A closer look at the shadowy fiends up above only revealed to Zabuza scores of scarlet, glowing eyes narrowed in malice as they gazed together at the coward below them, paying no heed to the renegade.

“Those aren’t demons at all, are they, Yakushi Kabuto?” Zabuza asked coldly, making the man jump in fright and whirl around to behold him as Zabuza slammed the door shut behind him.

“ **YOU!** ” Kabuto screamed in horror as he recognized Zabuza. “Why are you still alive?! That monstrosity was supposed to kill you back there in Brookhaven!”

Zabuza laughed harshly and snapped at him, “Unfortunately for you, you’re not at all in control of what happens in this town, you sick freak. That thing in the examination room was there to forcibly guide me towards the truth this town needs me to see, not end my life as you wanted. And my **goodness** , just look at what a mess you’ve become!”

He let himself cackle at the look of fury on Kabuto’s face, and casually refilled his gun with one of the boxes he had acquired at the Police Station. Zabuza took notice of what looked like a disproportionately massive hospital scalpel clutched in Kabuto’s right hand, poised to strike.

“Don’t you dare mock me, criminal!” Kabuto shouted at him.

“Look at the pot, calling the kettle black,” Zabuza wryly retorted, casually stepping forward. “You’re no better than me, Yakushi Kabuto. In fact, based on what this town’s revealed to me, I do believe I have the right to say that you’re **much** worse than a mere vagabond like me.”

Kabuto shuddered violent and shrieked at the top of his lungs, “ **THIS TOWN!** This damned town’s been sentient the moment I made the mistake of stepping one foot in its cursed streets, and it’s been out to get me at every turn! Right after that horrid siren went off back in South Vale, I was soaked with **blood** pouring down from the sky, and I was driven into that church below the surface of the Amusement Park! And I saw... **I saw...** ”

“You saw the truth about what that ‘god’ really is, didn’t you?”

Kabuto froze up, and the look of alarm on his face affirmed to Zabuza that his geuss had hit the mark. Everything Silent Hill had told him, by means of Alessa and the notes he’d read on his journey, had described in ominous detail that the cult lurking in the town worshipped something vile in nature, but dressed up as benevolent.

Zabuza stood barely two feet away from the lying government man, ready to gun him down at a moment’s notice. He glanced up again, at the shadowy people observing them from above, and recalled the many marked graves from the graveyard near South Vale, the ones marked with the names of various Japanese women that had so confused himself and Yugao.

“I don’t know exactly what you did, you monster, but I do know that whatever it was, this town successfully lured you here to make you own up to it. You’ve caused so many people to suffer needlessly in whatever disgusting experiments you and your master performed, and Silent Hill is making you face the reality of your sins. Those women...those girls.... **what the fuck did you do to them?** ”

“It’s not your business what me and Orochimaru did!” Kabuto snapped back. “If it wasn’t for that slimy brat and that damned officer, Hayate-”

“Whom you had Baki hunt down and murder, in a wasted attempt to protect your scheming hides,” Zabuza interjected.

“Shut it! That idiot should’ve covered his tracks better! It’s his fault that Orochimaru got killed!”

“You’re wrong again, Kabuto. The only fault is with you and Orochimaru for destroying so many lives, all for the sake of your sick ‘research’. This all seems to be divine karma for what you’ve pulled, and for the tears that’ve been shed because of your evil deeds. Do you have any idea how much pain you caused your victims to feel, along with Hayate’s fiance?”

Kabuto snarled, “I couldn’t give two shits about any of them, and neither did Orochimaru! Anybody who got in our way was only setting themselves up to be wiped out by our hand!”

Zabuza said softly but sinisterly, “Ah, so you **both** are psychopaths.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Momochi Zabuza! People like you and Baki, mere criminals lacking any etiquette, have no right to judge somebody like me!”

“You’re wrong again, you hypocrite. It’s true, me, Baki and the rest of us made some poor choices, but none of us would ever stoop as low as you two did. You lied to Baki, didn’t you? You and Orochimaru **lied** to him about why you desperately wanted Hayate dead!”

Kabuto flinched, and disdainfully asked, “What makes you say that?”

The memory of Baki screaming and sobbing in horror after hearing Zabuza recount the vile truth of Haku being raped by an officer, along with his fellow criminal wailing about the sheer vileness of anybody wanting to harm a kid like Haku had been, came to the front of Zabuza’s mind as he silenced Kabuto with iron-tainted words:

“ **Baki would’ve killed you and Orochimaru instead, if he’d known that he was protecting child killers like you two.** ”

Up above, the red-eyed shadows all twitched in tandem, and Zabuza knew that the town had instantly confirmed his dread-filled suspicions about what exactly Kabuto had done.

Zabuza shouted at Kabuto, “This is your last chance, Yakushi Kabuto! At this moment, the fiance of the hero you and Orochimaru murdered is somewhere in this town, looking for you, one of the people responsible for her pain! Silent Hill has clearly given you multiple chances to own up to what you’ve done, when it could’ve just as easily left your fate up to Yugao to decide! This is a matter of deciding between life and death, between living as the coward you’ve been, and having the humility to admit your wrongdoing! Now, decide!”

At that, Kabuto shrieked a warped warcry, and charged forward, swing his enlarged scalpel in a vicious blow. But before he could so much as attempt to strike, Zabuza had already raised his gun and aimed a deadly, true shot at Kabuto’s chest.

Kabuto staggered back from the pain and force of the gunshot, hacking up blood and shedding one single tear as he collapsed to the ground, heaving and gasping for breath. Zabuza listened closely in confusion as Kabuto uttered his last words, stretching his free hand up towards the ceiling, and grabbing in vain at something unseen.

“ **Nonou-okaasama...** ”

With that, his arm fell to the floor, and Yakushi Kabuto ceased breathing. Blood pooled around his corpse as Zabuza shook his head in disgust.

_“He denied his evil choices to the very end...what a waste.”_

Zabuza’s attention was drawn to the railing above him as the shadowy figures suddenly started to lose the dark cloaks surrounding each of them. He gawked as bit by bit, the darkness was lifted, until the true forms of the “demons” that had previously haunted Kabuto were brutally revealed.

The renegade couldn’t help but scream and scream in horror as he took in the forms of dozens of young Japanese girls, all weeping angry, bitter tears as they glared down at the man who had helped them hurt.

They slowly disappeared into thin air, leaving Zabuza to collapse to his knees as he wept at the truth of what the two “researchers” had done.

_“That’s...that’s easily 50 girls they killed! But for what?!”_

To his alarm, a door above banged open, and when he heard a horrified gasp, Zabuza lifted his head to see two young adults staring down at the sight on the ground before them. One of them, a girl with platinum-blonde hair, pointed an accusing finger at Zabuza as she screamed in fury.

“ **Murderer!** ”

Zabuza scoffed back at her, but before he could continue, she abruptly whirled around and bolted through the door she had entered through, leaving Zabuza alone with Kabuto’s corpse, and the second newcomer, a smug young man smirking in cold satisfaction.

“My apologies for Claudia’s rash behavior, Mr. Momochi,” the boy said calmly, glancing at Kabuto’s still-bleeding corpse. “She has a tendency to freak out unnecessarily whenever she believes the Order has been interfered with.”

“The Order...” Zabuza mumbled, and he shakily stood up “Why are you kids working for the Order?”

“For Claudia, it’s all she has at this point. For me...it’s the money to be earned. You have no idea what kind of massive profit I’m going to get when I ensure that the Order goes up and running in the **very** near future.”

Zabuza asked him, “Wait, who are you, anyway?”

The boy gave him a mock grimace, and said to him, “Ah, how rude of me. I’m Vincent, Mr. Momochi. And let me save us both important time by answering the obvious question: I know who **you** are because, like our ol’ boy Kabuto there, I’m an excellent researcher.”

Vincent gave him a dramatic sigh, and told him, “I suppose an explanation for this mess is indeed in order, isn’t it, Mr. Momochi? After all, you still know so **little** about the Order, and for that matter, what Kabuto and our agent Orochimaru were doing back in Japan. Or rather, what they **attempted** to do.”

The horrid revelation that the two researchers had murdered scores of young girls in their experiments still burned viciously in Zabuza’s mind, and he abruptly asked Vincent, “They weren’t...trying to make those girls birth your ‘god’, were they?”

“How immensely astute of you, Mr. Momochi!” Vincent answered, his brows raised sharply. “It appears you’ve paid **excellent** attention to whatever this town’s showed you thus far. Allow me to fill you in on the grisly details.”

“You’re right, of course. Orochimaru, or Maenari Nobuo as he was known to the rest of the world, enlisted Yakushi Kabuto as his accomplice in his grand plan to have the honor of being the man who would ensure the birth of god after our deceased high priestess, Dahlia Gillespie, failed to do so with Alessa, her daughter, on that dark day in Silent Hill back then.”

_“Alessa...no wonder you hate the Order so much. It’s a false religion of evil and lies.”_ Zabuza scowled as Vincent went on.

“But you see, Mr. Momochi, Alessa was and still is the **only** girl who has the ability to become the Mother of God. Nobody else can, no matter who wills it. And so, those poor Japanese girls all died in vain after the rituals performed on them inevitably went awry.”

“And you approve of this?!” Zabuza snapped up at him, and Vincent glared down at him.

“Do I look like a sadist, Mr. Momochi? Of course I don’t. Orochimaru knew full and well that his attempts were futile at best, and vile at worst. All of us in the Order know that until we find Alessa, the birth of god is on standby. The disgusting hubris of Orochimaru and Kabuto led to the pointless death of so many girls, and I’ll never approve of that. And although Claudia might understandably seem like a lunatic with blind faith, she, too, will never agree with this massacre.”

Zabuza breathed a sigh of relief, and Vincent chuckled dryly.

“Oh come now, did you really think that I’m just like Kabuto? I have my standards too, you know. Even I know when something wrong is plainly wrong. Both Orochimaru and Kabuto got their comeuppance, and I have no tears to shed for either of them.”

“You have no pity at all?” Zabuza asked out of genuine shock, and Vincent shook his head coldly.

“No, Mr. Momochi, especially not for Kabuto. I heard him wail the name of his foster mother, a kind woman named Nonou who took him and other kids in after their parents were killed in acts of violence. Kabuto knew his entire life what it’s like being an orphan, but that didn’t stop him from orphaning those girls, and obliterating the joy of their parents. Had he chosen to follow the loving example of his foster mother over the arrogance of Orochimaru, he wouldn’t have gotten himself inevitably killed.”

Vincent grabbed the doorknob behind him, and as he turned to leave, he told Zabuza, “Now then, this is goodbye, Mr. Momochi. It was undeniably odd meeting you in a manner such as this, but in the end, it was worthwhile. I do hope that you yourself pay attention to what this town’s trying to tell you, and face the future accordingly, unlike our friend Kabuto here, who chose to deny it all up unto the bitter end.”

With that, Zabuza was left alone in the Operating Room, with only Kabuto’s body and his jumbled, confused thoughts as company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author Note:
> 
> Hey folks, thank you very much for continuing to read this fic! I regret the overly long hiatus I took on this, but I'm relieved to be finally continuing the story. I'm coming so close to the climax of Zabuza's journey in Silent Hill, and I can't wait for you to read it.
> 
> On that note, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on the story so far. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thank you again for reading this work of mine, and I hope you continue to enjoy reading this.
> 
> -nightwish435


	10. Tears of Grief, Tears of Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of Suicide/Suicidal Thoughts/Sexual Violence

When Zabuza finally made himself stand and leave the Operating Room, he found that the rest of Alchemilla Hospital had regressed back to its previous form, all traces of the blood that had drenched its walls gone. Besides the extreme state of dilapidation and utter lack of life, it was now a normal hospital.

_ “So Kabuto’s dead,”  _ Zabuza mused as he headed towards the hospital’s front entrance.  _ “Can’t say I feel too bad. If I hadn’t shot him dead, he would’ve tried to kill me with that scalpel of his. It’s too bad, but he pretty much brought about his own death by what he did back in Japan.” _

When he stepped back out onto Koontz Street, he froze up in alarm at the sight of a massive mob of demonic officers and nurses charging towards him, the officers roaring furiously and the nurses shrieking with more insane laughter. Zabuza bolted down the street, heading further and further into the center of Paleville.

He continued to run, until he found the intersection between Koontz and Wilson blocked, forcing him to take a sharp left onto the adjacent street. Behind him, the monsters were only a few feet away, and Zabuza could see that the officers were ready to gun him down, without any Penitents to protect him from their brutal barrage.

To Zabuza’s relief, he saw the door to the “Tramps Bar” open on his right, and without any hesitation, he ran inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

Inside, the building was pitch black, and devoid of life, except for two quiet patrons seated at opposite ends of the bar. From what Zabuza could make out with his flashlight, they were middle-aged Japanese adults, and he was both relieved and confused to find more wandering people in Silent Hill. He carefully approached the man at the left side of the bar, but hesitated when he heard muffled weeping.

“It’s my f-fault...” he heard the man moan as he clutched his head in his hands. “It’s all my fault. I killed that boy...I...killed...”

Zabuza drew a sharp breath, frightened at the wild card the town had suddenly pulled on him, and shakily asked, “ **Kakashi?** ”

Sure enough, the man who had unwittingly killed Haku on that accursed bridge turned around, staring up at Zabuza with bloodshot eyes and shaking uncontrollably.

“Zabuza...what...why...how am I seeing you?” the officer wearily asked, and Zabuza struggled to answer.

“W...what do you mean, Kakashi? On that note, why are you here in Silent Hill?”

“Silent Hill?” Kakashi slowly looked around him, moving sluggishly. “Where is Silent Hill? I don’t...understand what’s going on...”

“Neither do I,” Zabuza answered shortly. There was a melancholic but unnerving chill running up and down his spine, at the notion rising in his mind. “You told me to flee here to America, you ensured with the strings you pulled that the feds would never realize that  **I** was the mercenary Gato hired to terrorize that village, but I never expected that you’d follow in my footsteps. Kakashi, what happened to you?”

Kakashi shrugged sadly, and told him, “I...don’t know. I closed my eyes, and next thing I knew, I was here, in this dark place, unaware of how I got here, and unaware of what happens next. Zabuza...why did  **you** come to this place? Are you...looking for somebody?”

Zabuza grimaced, knowing what was about to happen next, and answered quietly, “I came here to find peace over Haku’s death.”

At that, Kakashi gasped harshly, and his sobs began anew, leaving Zabuza to stand helpless and watch as the officer collapsed into a weeping heep.

“ **Zabuza, I...I...I’m so sorry!** ” Kakashi wailed. “I never wanted to kill that boy, I never wanted to make you hurt like you’ve been ever since, I-I-I only wanted the chaos with Gato’s evil plan to stop, I never-”

“K-Kakashi...” Zabuza softly said, feeling his throat choke up, and tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. “It wasn’t your-”

“ **YES IT WAS!** ” Kakashi screamed, cutting off Zabuza harshly. “I didn’t bother looking before pulling that trigger, not even when I heard my cadet Naruto scream to stop, not when I heard that boy charging towards us, and I...”

He grabbed at his hair with iron-tight fists, and shrieked, “ **Every time I close my eyes, every time I try to sleep, all I can see is the light leaving his doe-brown eyes, and the memory of you screaming and sobbing with his dead body in your arms!** ”

Kakashi nearly slid off of his seat, before Zabuza bolted forward and seized him in a stony grip. The officer could only sob, with Zabuza only a step away from following suit. To his right, he could hear the woman breaking down into similar tears, and Zabuza had a sinking feeling that he knew who she had to be.

“Kakashi, listen to me, please!” Zabuza whispered hoarsely, making the officer sit firmly on the barstool, and looking him square in the eye. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself! It’s one thing to feel remorse, but  **this** ? Self-hatred will get you nowhere, and I would know! You know that I’ve been beating myself up ever since that awful day, but both of us need to allow ourselves to move on before we destroy ourselves pointlessly!”

“But how?!” Kakashi asked, unable to stop crying. “How can I forgive myself for the pain I’ve caused you both?!”

Zabuza leaned forward, and softly told him, “ **Because I forgive you, Hatake Kakashi. I forgive you, and I know for a fact that Haku did, too. Now please, forgive yourself, and let yourself move on.** ”

Kakashi paused, and let out a deep, sorrowful sigh, disappearing into thin air as his breath rushed out. In a matter of mere seconds, the officer was gone, leaving Zabuza shaken and still weeping.

_ “I...have a  _ **_really_ ** _ bad feeling that I know why these two appeared here...” _

He carefully approached the weeping woman, noticing the professional clothes she was wearing, looking very much like a health professional. Zabuza felt his stomach lurch as the thought back to his expedition in Brookhaven Hospital, and the memories that haunted place provoked of Haku’s incompetent mental health counselor who failed to take his trauma seriously.

_ “This is  _ **_that_ ** _ nurse, the one who Haku told me was confused at the notion that a homeless boy like him could-” _

“Why didn’t I listen to him better?” he heard her moan as she slumped across the bar, demure and despondent. “I should’ve known better than to-”

“You were Haku’s nurse, weren’t you?”

She turned to look at him, and sheepishly nodded, her black hair matted to her face from her tears.

“I was. I remember him, that boy. Yuki Haku, the homeless boy who was only saved from a shelterless life by the miraculous kindness of a passerby. He came to me, and begged me to help him recover from a moment of sexual violence perpetrated against him by none other than  **a police officer.** ”

The nurse gritted her teeth in shame, and told Zabuza, “I was an idiot. A blind, naive idiot who only ever believed that any nation’s police force only works for the common good, to prevent injustice. I never allowed myself to face the ongoing, grim truth that sometimes, its the police themselves who committed the  **worst** injustices known to mankind. That’s why I failed him, that poor boy.  **I couldn’t imagine any officer of the law willingly doing that to an innocent, sweet-natured kid like him.** ”

Zabuza grimaced as more sobs racked her body, and she wailed, “ **And he committed suicide by cop because of my failure to hear him out!** ”

He wrapped a sturdy arm around her shoulders and hushed her gently, unnerved and saddened at the confession he was hearing. It was apparent that the general populace of Japan had never learned the real truth about why Yuki Haku had perished on the Naruto Bridge.

“Ma’am, please listen to me, like you did for so many others,” Zabuza begged her softly, making her take a deep breath and look at him. “I understand why you believe that Haku wanted to use that skirmish on the bridge to end his pain...I absolutely do. But you’re wrong, and you’re unfairly accusing yourself. You weren’t the reason Haku chose to die on that bridge... **I was.** ”

The nurse gawked up at him, and shakily asked, “W-what? But why?!”

“Let me explain.  **I’m** the man who took Haku off of the streets, who gave him the shelter he couldn’t find. As he told me himself, many times, I restored his hope in the future, and made him feel safer than he ever had. In time... **we fell in love with each other, and we fell hard.** ”

He watched her face change from grief to awe, and he told her, “ **Haku didn’t die on that bridge because he hated life, ma’am. He died because he sacrificed his life to save me from a bullet that was only ever meant for me. That boy you only had the chance to see as sad and broken made the choice he did out of his undying love for me, not because he wanted his pain to end.** ”

She breathed hard, and said, “That’s...beautiful. To hear that Haku was blessed with such a powerful bond of love in his life. But still...”

Her tears resumed their journey down her face, and she whispered, “I can’t forget that I didn’t take his trauma seriously. And that’s why I can’t move on. I can’t forget that horrible, dismissive mistake I made.”

Zabuza sat on the barstool next to her, placed a large hand over hers, and firmly told her, “I know Haku far more than you had the chance to. I know that he was, and still is, the purest-hearted person I’ve ever met. There wasn’t a bone of malice in him, and he realized that life is too short to fill your heart with bitterness and hatred like I once did. He forgave  **all** of the people who wronged him, even that bastard of an officer who brutalized him like he did, because Haku didn’t have the patience to let his heart be warped by grudges. And that absolutely includes you, ma’am.”

Zabuza gave her a gentle, compassionate smile, and softly said to her, “ **Haku forgave you long before that day on the bridge. And as the man who loved him, who loves him still, I forgive you too. Know that there’s no reason to keep hating yourself, because Haku’s in a place where pain and sorrow will never touch him ever again. And I’m certain that he’ll be there to welcome you with loving, gracious arms when you’re ready to go there yourself.** ”

He watched the nurse take it all in, allow herself to give him a meek smile, and squeeze out the last of the tears from her eyes, tears that were doubtlessly filled with relief instead of prolonged grief. Like Kakashi had minutes before, Zabuza watched her fade away, leaving him alone in the pitch-black bar.

He slowly stood back up, and glanced around him at the spots where the seemingly spiritual patrons had momentarily been. Zabuza shook his head sadly and walked towards the entrance, ready to head north towards the Gillespie House on the town’s border.

_ “I’m glad they’re at peace. But...”  _ Zabuza thought sadly as he opened the door,  _ “I’m worried about why they were here in Silent Hill...please, please tell me that they didn’t commit-” _

He ceased his musings when he stepped outside and realized that the dozens of monsters that had chased him to the bar had likewise disappeared. For whatever reasons there were, Zabuza’s affirmations of forgiveness to Kakashi and the nurse had seemingly dispelled the monstrosities that had hounded him previously.

_ “This must be the town’s way of showing me that I’m finally moving past my bitterness, eh?” _


	11. Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of Suicide/Suicidal Thoughts/Sexual Violence

Zabuza turned right and continued walking down Wilson Street, moving quietly and feeling far more peaceful than when he had originally stepped into Silent Hill’s foggy streets for the first time. Only the soft, meek wind gave him company as Sagan Street drew closer.

Up ahead, Zabuza noticed Yugao crouched on the ground, weeping quietly, with no monsters chasing her either. Zabuza took a long, deep breath, made himself contain his contempt for the hypocritical ex-officer, and approached her calmly.

Immediately, she stood up as she heard Zabuza approaching, and when Yugao fully realized who was coming towards her, she bolted towards him desperately. Zabuza froze up as Yugao tackled him in a tight, uncomfortable embrace, sobbing madly on his shoulder, seemingly forgetting that he had voiced clear disdain for her back in the Police Station.

When it was clear that she wasn’t letting go anytime soon, Zabuza awkwardly patted her on the back and mumbled, “Um, Yugao, what happened to you?”

She drew back, hastily wiped away at her face, and told him, “I get it now, Zabuza. Why Silent Hill called me here. It wasn’t just to make me accept my grief over losing Hayate... **it was to make me understand that I was wrong for what I did to that cri-to that man, Baki. I made the wrong choice, and I know that Hayate would only be horrified if he knew that I’m a murderer.** ”

Zabuza nodded patiently, and said, “Accepting that you made a bad choice is the first step, Yugao. Learning how to move forward is the next. I’m glad that  **you** have the common sense and humility to acknowledge that what you did was wrong, unlike Kabuto.”

“Kabuto?” Yugao cocked an eyebrow at him in bafflement. “Who the hell is ‘Kabuto’?”

There was no going back, and Zabuza steeled himself for whatever vitriolic reaction Yugao was about to surely have over the revelation he was prepared to give her. For some reason, the town had chosen not to reveal to her who was behind her fiance’s murder, and it seemed that Silent Hill had left that task in Zabuza’s hands.

“Yugao...there’s no way I can sugarcoat this with you. Kabuto...along with his master, Orochimaru, or as we all knew him publicly, Maenari Nobuo... **they** were the ones who hired Baki to kill Hayate. You were right from the get-go. It turns out that government officials  **were** behind his violent death after all.”

He watched Yugao’s face inevitably contort into raw fury as she coldly muttered, “Go on.”

“While I was in Alchemilla Hospital, guided there by the town, I found news articles from Japan, sometime after you and I arrived here in America. The truth about Maenari Nobuo, the man you, me and the rest of Japan fawned over as an amazing biologist, turned out to be involved with the vile cult in this town known as ‘The Order’, a false religion deadset on using young girls as sacrifices in an attempt to rebirth their ‘god’.”

Yugao clutched at her stomach as nausea understandably swept over her, and she nodded for him to continue when he gave her a worried look.

“One of the girls that Orochimaru and Kabuto were planning to pull that sacrifice on, Mitarashi Anko, managed to escape their facility with the help of none other than Hayate. She told him everything he needed to bring Orochimaru’s crimes to light, and it seems that he was able to pass that information on to somebody higher up before he was murdered shortly afterward. His murder was in vain, Yugao. Those bastards tried to have him silenced, in a mad bid to prevent him from alerting the country to the horrors they’d committed behind closed doors, but it turns out that his murder only confirmed that girl’s testimony. The articles I read revealed that soon after Hayate left us, the police found and killed Orochimaru when they tracked down his underground facility. Your fiance truly died a hero, a martyr for the sake of justice, and even a man such as myself can’t help but respect his selfless pursuit of justice.”

It warmed his heart to see the look of rage and grief on Yugao’s face transform into pure joy at his words, and she beamed at him. Yugao raised her eyes to sky, no doubt casting her gaze towards the faraway place where both Hayate and Haku had gone, her sorrow melting away completely.

“Thank you, Zabuza,” she said softly, standing tall and filled with pride over Hayate’s heroism. “That means the world to me. But...”

She looked back at him, and asked him sternly, “Where’s Kabuto now?”

Zabuza bit his lip and told her, “I shot him down in self-defense back in Alchemilla, when he tried to cut me down after I yelled at him to own up to the awful shit he did next to Orochimaru.”

“Then justice has truly been done,” Yugao mused. “Oh, Zabuza...when I came here, I gave myself a grim ultimatum. I said that if I couldn’t find my peace over losing the love of my life, I’d gladly end my pain here in this forgotten town. But I understand now...that choice, along with the violent choice I made against Baki, are boht things that Hayate would never approve of, nor want me to do.”

She then looked Zabuza firmly in the eye, and said meekly, “Zabuza...I’m so, so sorry that I acted all holier-than-thou with you. I was such a fucking hypocrite, and I regret it, and I sure as hell despite my vengeful choice I made back in Japan. I can never go back there, because I guarantee you that they know Hayate’s heartbroken widow is the #1 most logical suspect in this case.”

“I’ve already forgiven you and your facade, Yugao,” Zabuza answered, and she let out a massive sigh of relief. “But please, hear me out about Baki.”

To his pleasure, she obeyed, standing silent as he ran over the truth about who Baki had been.

“I completely understand why you killed Baki. I don’t approve of it, especially the brutal way you carried it out, but I’ve been there myself. Heck, how can I deny my own sadism?”

“What do you mean?” Yugao asked in alarm. “Did you do the same thing?!”

“Yes, I did, and I don’t know if I can say how justified I was in how cruelly I did it. I can’t keep denying the sad truth about why Haku, my soulmate, is no longer alive and by my side. He sacrificed himself, Yugao, to save my greedy, hate-filled ass when I allowed myself to be lured into a mission to terrorize a small village into subservience under a horrid businessman named ‘Gato’.”

“Oh, those of us in Kyoto knew all too well about that snake.”

“Indeed. Haku sacrificed himself to save me from a gunshot fired by the Osaka police captain sent to stop me. He died because back then, I valued money over people. And oh, Yugao, I was such an idiot to have that attitude. It cost me the only person who ever made me truly happy.”

The ex-officer placed a gentle hand on his broad shoulder and told him, “Like you told me, the fact that you’re owning up to your mistake shows that you have genuine humility. I don’t condemn you, Zabuza, especially after you showing me grace for killing Baki so violently.”

“Thank you, Yugao. About Baki, though...”

He said to her softly, “I assure you, if Baki had realized when he was hired to kill your fiance that his employers were men who hurt and killed innocent children for a living, he would’ve viciously slaughtered them like the pigs they were, and may’ve even helped Hayate hunt them down. You see, while Baki was no doubt a violent criminal, he forever despised violence against children, and wouldn’t hesitate to drop everything to help a child in need.”

Yugao grimaced, looked down at her feet in shame and mumbled, “It makes sense. I’m sorry that I destroyed his life.”

She glanced behind her, towards the direction of the northernmost town exit, and said, “And it’s time for me to finally leave this place. Silent Hill opened my eyes to the truth about what I did, and to the fact that it’s not my time yet to join Hayate in that peaceful place. My time to be reunited with him will come, somewhere down this winding road we call life, and it would be my ultimate mistake to try to make that moment happen by choosing to die.”

To Zabuza’s alarm, she turned back to him, and said pleadingly, “ **Please, Zabuza, be sure that you, too, avoid making that mistake.** ”

“W-what do you mean?” he stammered. “I-I’m not suicidal-”

“You were when we first met back in that graveyard, Zabuza,” she interjected sharply. “We both were. When I looked into your eyes, I saw the same pain that I’ve been going through. Your motivation was the same as mine for coming here:  **if we couldn’t admit to our own pain, we both would’ve ended our lives here in this foggy town.** ”

Zabuza couldn’t help but shudder at the brutal accuracy of Yugao’s words. She had hit the mark perfectly.

“Please, Zabuza,” she continued, “don’t let your grief over Haku consume you. You and I both know that hope isn’t lost, that we’ll see them again. So please, I’m begging you, stay strong, and let this town show you how to move forward like it did to me.”

Zabuza breathed hard as more tears beaded in his eyes, and he whispered hoarsely, “Yugao, I’ve wanted to die ever since I held his lifeless body in my arms, on that horrible day. It’s a miracle that I haven’t acted on that desire yet.”

“You’re such a strong person, Zabuza, but please, don’t keep shouldering this burden. It isn’t what Haku would want you to do, and it breaks my heart to see you crumbling like this, especially when I’ve been going through the same ordeal. It’s ok to hurt,  **but remember that you’re far stronger than your pain could ever hope to be.** You have to face your pain and conquer it completely in order to allow yourself to move on, and I know that the town will give you that opportunity like it’s done for me.”

She caressed his face lovingly, wiping away his tears, and held him in a tight embrace that he gladly returned. For a good minute, the two widowed, heartbroken survivors stood locked in the warm hug, before Yugao stepped back.

“This is goodbye, but only for a little while, Zabuza,” she said gently to him. “I’m heading to Augusta, the capital of this state, to start my life over. Meet me there when your journey in Silent Hill is complete.”

“Gladly, Yugao,” he told her. “Please stay safe.”

“You as well.”

Zabuza watched her walk calmly away into the fog of Central Silent Hill, eventually fading from his sight and leaving him to continue his path north towards Alessa’s old home.

_ “Face my pain and conquer it. If that’s what must be done, then I know  _ **_exactly_ ** _ what I have to do next.” _

_ “Where are you, you bandaged creep?!”  _ Zabuza thought furiously, clenching his fists and no longer terrified of the creature he had named the Bandaged Man, his seemingly invincible shadow.  _ “I’m going to obliterate you this time, and you won’t stop me from moving forward!” _

 


	12. At the House of Nightmares

The path northward took Zabuza onto Simmons Street, with the massive Silent Hill Town Center looming up on his right as he continued his journey. He held his jaw clenched tight with focus as he scanned his surroundings for any sign of his bandaged foe.

_ “When I find that bastard, I’m gonna own him this time!”  _ he thought furiously as he gazed around him.  _ “I won’t let anything stand between me and whatever end goal this town’s prepared for me!” _

Zabuza flinched when he heard the telltale screeching of the nightmarish Beheading Blade scraping on the pavement, and sure enough, the Bandaged Man came creeping out of the public parking lot to Zabuza’s left, snarling at him and ready to attack. The vagabond had to make himself remember Yugao’s final words to him in order to silence the fear already swelling up inside him.

“Out of my way, punk!” Zabuza roared as his battle cry, and he charged forward, catching his opponent off guard and paralyzing the creature with shock.

The gap between them was closed in a handful of seconds, and before the Bandaged Man could react, Zabuza seized the Blade’s hilt with both hands, clenching it tight with all of his strength, and fighting to prevent its wielder from swinging it. It would only take a minute for the alarm of Zabuza’s unexpected spurt of fury to wear off, and he knew that he had to act before the Bandaged Man regained composure.

“You’ve haunted me long enough, monster!” Zabuza snarled into the Bandaged Man’s face, watching with satisfaction at how shocked the creature was by his bravery. “And I know what you are!  **You are me!** ”

At that, the Bandaged Man’s mouth, filled with those razor-sharp teeth that had terrified Zabuza before his moment of courage, fell wide open, agape with surprise. Zabuza knew that he had properly identified his enemy, and continued to shout.

“I know that if I rip off those filthy bandages covering your face, all I’ll see is myself, because that’s what you are! You’re the embodiment of the pain I’ve tried and failed to cover up ever since I lost Haku on that damned bridge, created to remind me that running away won’t make you go away.  **But I’m done running!** I’m done being afraid of dealing with my pain! I  **will** heal, I  **will** move on from the past that’s haunted me for so long, and I won’t let you stop me!”

He watched the Bandaged Man warily, not sure what would happen next. After a painfully long pause, Zabuza felt the Man’s grip on the Blade release, letting Zabuza feel the full weight of the hefty sword. Zabuza grunted in alarm at the turn of events, and stood still as a statue as he observed his opponent’s next move.

The Bandaged Man stood up straight, closed his agape mouth, and nodded in satisfaction. Instead of moving to attack Zabuza like the vagabond had been prepared for, the creature dissolved before him into a swirl of bloodied bandages that fell to the street, leaving behind no traces of the fiend that had plagued him.

Zabuza gawked at the turn of events, and released his grip on the rusted Blade, not wanting to be bothered with a reminder of his rage-filled delusions of the past. The instant the sword hit the ground, Zabuza watched it dissolve completely into ash that was quickly blown away, scattered on the wind out of sight. Both the Bandaged Man and the sword that Zabuza had been so terrified of had been obliterated by his declaration.

_ “It’s over...just like that. Confronting my pain like this, though...it feels...it feels so odd, no longer denying my hurt.” _

He made himself continue to walk down the street, pondering his experiences in the town, and attempting to recall every single entity that he had encountered. Only one other creature remained to be dealt with: the Penitent, the murky, malformed creatures that acted far too similar to Haku in regards to the boy’s viciously protective towards Zabuza.

_ “I think I understand what those things represent, too. And I feel like shit. When I first met Haku, I saw him as a dirty thing, not just because he was homeless...but because I must’ve known at that first moment that he was openly gay. Part of me must’ve been freaked out about myself being seen as the same way, until he and I fell in love.” _

_ “And that explains why they always seem to be praying, and pleading to me. This town needed me to acknowledge what Haku means to me, and that Haku kept begging me to not go through with Gato’s disgusting mission, what ultimately cost him his life. They need me to listen to the town, and to Haku’s words that still echo in my heart. It’s time I finally listen.” _

Up ahead, Simmons Street turned into a narrow county road that extended out of the Central district towards the houses lining Silent Hill’s border, where the ruins of the burnt Gillespie House still stood. Zabuza crept forward, and noticed the black, warped and bent figure stumbling towards him from the end of the street.

The final Penitent hobbled towards Zabuza, its hands clasped once again in that prayer-like stance, and Zabuza felt a twinge of sadness as Haku’s brown eyes stared up at him when the creature had come close enough. Together, Zabuza and the Penitent stood quietly together for several moments, alone in the swirling grey fog still covering the forgotten town.

There was no more revulsion in Zabuza has he stepped towards the pleading creature, and he placed his large, muscular hands on its frail shoulders, tenderly gazing down into its face, silently musing to himself how much it resembled his deceased lover.

“It’s ok,” Zabuza gently assured the Penitent, and it gazed up at him in awe, its rotten mouth agape as he continued to speak. “I won’t run away from my past or my pain anymore. I get it now, what this town wants me to do. This place wants me to move on, and stop denying my love for him.”

The Penitent’s mouth gradually contorted into its best rendition of a warm, loving grin, and Zabuza lovingly told it, “I’m going to the Gillespie House, to face the final surprise that Silent Hill has in store for me. I won’t flee, I won’t deny my pain nor my love, and I won’t leave this town until I’ve fulfilled the journey that I’ve been set on.”

Without any warning, the Penitent began to glow with a wondrous golden light that blinded Zabuza as it expanded. It disappeared into the light, and Zabuza had to fight back more tears as he took in the image that suddenly appeared in its place.

For just a mere millisecond, he saw Haku beaming up at him, silently weeping tears of relief. The vision disappeared just as quickly as it had came, leaving Zabuza shaken to the core.

_ “This thing was Haku’s avatar in the town all along, wasn’t it?” _

The last of the creatures had finally disappeared from the town, allowing Zabuza to continue his journey to Alessa’s old home. After a few minutes of walking, once he had passed by the rows of newer homes stationed outside Central Silent Hill, he came upon a flat, empty area of grass rustling softly in the swirling fog. At the utmost edge of the area stood blackened spikes of wood and the remains of a door, all that remained of the Gillespie House after that cruel fire had consumed it so many years prior.

When Zabuza reached the house and carefully stepped inside, he saw a young blonde girl standing in the middle of what was once the living room, looking around warily and attempting to process her surroundings.

“This is...this is...” he heard her mutter as she gazed around her, starting to shudder as she gradually realized where she was.

Zabuza flinched as the blonde girl was suddenly replaced by Alessa Gillespie, looking gloomily at him as she ominously whispered to him, “ **This is where it happened.** ”

“This is where your mother immolated you, isn’t it?” he cautiously asked her as he took in the devastated ruins of the home.

“Yes, Zabuza. In the basement of this house, the place that was supposed to be my one place of refuge from the malice I dealt with at school, but became my prison, she burned me alive...all in her goal to impregnate me with the fetus of what the Order calls ‘god’. As you can see, her misguided ritual obliterated our home.”

“I’m so sorry, Alessa...” he wearily muttered as he imagined the horrific amount of pain the girl had surely dealt with over the years. “You deserved so much better.”

She nodded sadly, and told him, “My biggest wish is that Heather, my reincarnation, and the girl you momentarily saw here, never has to go through the horrors my own mother put me through. Now then...”

Alessa glanced to the staircase at Zabuza’s left, oddly stable in comparison to the rest of the home, and descending into the darkness below. Zabuza shuddered violently as he realized he was looking at the entrance to the room where Alessa’s nightmare had begun.

They both warily looked at the basement stairs, and Alessa quietly told him, “ **That** is where your journey here ends, Momochi Zabuza. But before you go down there, I need you to hear my warning about what lies there.”

He turned back to her as Alessa shivered in fear, no doubt recalling the horrid memories of her pain-filled past.

“As you know, the basement of this house is where my pain began all those years ago. It's the place where my mother made the cruelest, most selfish choice she ever did: to use me in a ritual that has claimed the lives of all the other young female victims of the Order, a ritual that I never consented to, an event that was performed against my will. That act of utmost hate and disregard for the sanctity of life is what caused Silent Hill to become the place of nightmares it is now. The spiritual power that’s always presided over this area was vastly warped by what it felt happen to me in the confines of the basement, and it synchronized with my pain, so that it could use my suffering to manifest multiple horrific punishments upon the evildoers who would be lured here in later years.”

“Dream researchers refer to the basement as the place that represents our innermost fears, and a place where repressed memories forcibly manifest. The basement of this house contains the echo of what I suffered back then...and something else. Something utterly vile that latched onto this place, drawn to the hate and misery that was released that awful night.”

Zabuza felt a horrid, evil chill go up and down his spine as he took in Alessa’s words. In his mind, he was already imagining what sort of malicious creature could be lurking in the basement’s darkness.

Alessa gave Zabuza a stern, foreboding look as she said to him, “The citizens of Silent Hill all avoid this place because they call it ‘haunted’. In a way, Zabuza, they’re right, because something truly evil  **does** haunt the basement below us, something that might not be born out of Silent Hill’s nightmarish powers. You need to be on guard when you descend, and you  **must** have courage to face the thing that lurks there.”

Zabuza warily asked her, “Do you think that...it’s the ‘god’ of this town that waits below?”

Alessa grimaced at him, and muttered, “Maybe...maybe not. It wouldn’t surprise me, given how vile that thing truly is, despite what the Order says otherwise. But be careful, Zabuza. Chances are, it’s something even worse.”

“So be it,” he said, still shuddering from the unnatural chill running through him and aching to be done with the journey Silent Hill had set him on. “I’ll face whatever darkness I have to, if it means doing so will allow me to finally leave this town.”

“It will, Zabuza,” Alessa assured him. “Just remember the lesson of the Penitent when you face the monstrosity down there. Good luck...and be brave, I beg you.”

With that, Alessa disappeared into thin air, leaving Zabuza alone once more. He took a deep breath and turned to the basement stairs, unnerved and aware that he was about to face something far more nightmarish than the Bandaged Man, or any other horror the town had presented to him.

_ "The lesson of the Penitent, huh? What does that mean?" _

Zabuza carefully descended the steps, noting that the blackened wood had transformed into scarlet metal grating that reeked heavily of blood. It looked nothing like the texture of the infrastructure that the town had previously taken to represent his depressed mind.

_ “What lies beneath this house? What could be twisting this place into such a tormented, hellish dimension?” _

When he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, Zabuza’s footsteps echoed harshly across the room, a pitch-black room cloaked in darkness and utterly unseeable. The unmistakable, foul stench of sulfur permeated the area, making Zabuza gag as he picked up on a low, rattling breath at the opposite end of the basement.

The darkness was broken by the eruption of violent red fire all around him, trapping him in a perimeter of flames, and cutting him off from the stairs. Zabuza grit his teeth, hurriedly refilled his handgun with the last bit of spare ammo, and beheld the monstrosity stumbling towards him.

A massive, reptilian man covered in crimson-scaly skin, sneering at him with a mouth filled with shark-like teeth that glinted sharply. Zabuza noted that the creature’s face faintly resembled Gato’s, and the symbolism wasn’t lost on him.

_ “Taking the form of the human I hated the most...how quaint.” _

He cocked his gun, and charged at the entity, with only the image of Haku beaming up at him proudly preventing him from being paralyzed with fear.


	13. Guardian Angel

To Zabuza’s chagrin, every single bullet he fired at the demon before him had no effect whatsoever, just like his first confrontation with the Bandaged Man. The bullets merely bounced off of the scarlet-scaly skin, and the monstrosity bellowed with guttural laughter as it charged towards Zabuza, forcing him to go on the defensive. The flames lining the perimeter of the dark basement roared around him, and Zabuza did his best to avoid being forced into them.

_ “What’ll I do when my bullets run out?!”  _ he thought as he felt his gun lighten with each worthless shot.  _ “I don’t have any other way to fight this thing, and if this goes the way I think it is, this void is where I’ll die!” _

Sweat streamed down his face as the stress of the situation overtook him. Zabuza capered desperately around the demon, doing his best to avoid the vicious black talons adorning its claws. There was no apparent help coming for him, from the town or Alessa. Impending death was now Zabuza’s reality, and when the last bullet left his handgun, he knew that he was a sitting duck.

_ “This is it...this is the end, after everything this town put me through. Was it all in vain? Did Silent Hill seriously put me through Hell just to let me die at the hands of this fiend?” _

Zabuza collapsed to his knees, weary and exhausted, no longer having any will to fight what had become a pointless battle. He let the bulletless handgun fall to the ground, knowing that its use as a weapon had become utterly obsolete. Barely two feet away, the demon roared with more horrible laughter and charged forward, its talons gleaming in the leaping firelight, poised to rip him to shreds.

But even in the face of impending destruction, the former fear that had plagued Zabuza was completely replaced by his desolate resolution to finally die, like he had considered as his backup plan before arriving in Silent Hill. The vagabond sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for death to claim him. His thoughts drifted to Haku as he heard the monster pound closer.

_“_ ** _Haku...I’m so sorry...I’ve failed you once again._** **_I deserve to die for not taking your love for me seriously, for ignoring your words of caution that could’ve saved us all if I had heeded them. I can only hope that I can find some semblance of mercy in whatever afterlife I’m headed for._** _”_

The demon’s footsteps suddenly screeched to a halt, and when Zabuza opened his eyes to inspect, he beheld the creature paralyzed from head to toe, a look of immense frustration and terror captured on its atrocious face. There was no immediate explanation available on what had come over it while Zabuza had shut his eyes, and Zabuza remained kneeling on the ground, unnerved and unsure of what would happen next.

Another moment passed, and then, the fiend shrieked in pain, breaking the silence and its paralysis as it squirmed on the spot, thrashing aimlessly at the space around it as it attempted to fight off an unseen foe. It snarled furiously, attempted to reach towards Zabuza with a violently quivering claw, only for a nauseating snapping sound to reverberate around the chamber as the scaled arm broke into without any warning.

_ “What is this?!”  _ Zabuza thought, bewildered at the rapid turn of events.  _ “Who-” _

**“DON’T TOUCH HIM WITH YOUR FILTHY HANDS!”**

The enraged battle cry echoed all around them, and Zabuza froze up, knowing without a shred of doubt who the voice belonged to. Already, Zabuza could feel sobs shaking his entire body and tears welling up in his eyes as he remembered the first time he had heard those words shouted before a similarly evil opponent had been obliterated by his protector.

He watched the demon contort unnaturally into a standing fetal position as a brilliant white light appeared behind it, quickly expanding to consume the creature entirely. The scarlet, reptilian fiend disappeared from sight, its shrieks of agony fading away as Zabuza heard Haku’s voice whisper to him softly and tenderly.

**“Zabuza...”**

All he could do was remain on his knees, the abyss of grief he had locked within threatening to consume him as he saw the light gently dim, revealing a slim, graceful figure calmly emerging from the nexus. Out of his peripheral vision, Zabuza saw the flames around them gradually disappeared, until completely dying out, without even a trace of smoke remaining. Before him, his angel still glowed with that heavenly light, now the only source of light in the otherwise dark chamber. The reunion Zabuza had desired for so long was at last accomplished, and Haku walked up to him, beaming down at Zabuza patiently as the heartbroken renegade finally fell apart.

Zabuza’s attempts to speak failed as his sorrow choked him up, and Haku silently shed joyful tears as the vagabond eagerly gazed into the boy’s doe-like brown eyes, relieved to see his soulmate after what had felt like a painful eternity of separation. He breathed heavily, gasping for air and on the verge of hyperventilating, his resurgent grief and overwhelming relief too much to handle.

“Ha...Ha...Ha...” he tried to say, meekly choking out syllables, Haku grinning at him encouragingly. At last, Zabuza regained just enough composure to bolt up and tackle Haku into the tightest embrace he had ever held the boy with, feeling slender arms wrap around his muscular torso and squeezing affectionately back. Haku was like a gentle heart, emanating a soothing warmth that quickly calmed Zabuza down, erasing the memories of his trauma and helping him speak through his tears.

“ **Haku!** ” he wailed, beyond grateful for the unexpected savior that the town had sent him. “I...”

“Oh, Zabuza,” Haku lovingly whispered as he continued to hold him. “It’s so, so good to embrace you again, to be in your loving arms. I’ve missed you so much, more than you could ever imagine.”

“Haku, I...” Zabuza shook harshly as another wave of grief welled up inside him, and he sobbed, “ **I’m so sorry!** ”

Haku leaned out of the embrace and looked up at him with alarm, and asked him, “For what, Zabuza?”

“It’s my fault! It’s my fault you died that day, and I’ve hated myself ever since! I lost you because of my greedy, selfish wish to trade the safety of those villagers for a mere sum of money, and it cost me you, the greatest treasure I’ve ever had! You couldn’t be by my side any longer because of that bullet meant for me, and all I’ve wanted to do is die, in my desperation to see you one more time! ”

Haku’s face fell with pity as he said to Zabuza, “Zabuza, why do you still beat yourself up after what Silent Hill’s shown you and taught you? Why do you refuse to forgive yourself after learning the mercy to forgive Captain Hatake and the nurse who failed to properly treat my trauma, and begging them to forgive themselves? Your immense self-hatred over my death prevented me from reaching you back in Brookhaven Hospital, and it wasn’t until Silent Hill caught you off-guard with my return for me to finally be able to hold you like this. You placed impassable walls of denial around your heart in your attempt to ignore your pain, and that’s why Silent Hill did everything in its power to break you down like it did. You had to confront your pain and sorrow in order for me to finally reach you.”

He placed a fragile hand tenderly on Zabuza’s face, and gently asked, “Do you understand now what Alessa Gillespie referred to as ‘the lesson of the Penitent’?”

Zabuza breathed heavily, trying to make himself regain full composure, and shakily replied, “I-I’m not sure, Haku. I mean, those things looked way too much like you, behaved just like you did against both Kakashi and that vile bastard of an officer who hurt you. And I saw you for a split second when the last of them disappeared from Silent Hill. But I still can’t fathom what their ‘lesson’ is supposed to be.”

“Then let me explain, my dear Zabuza. Silent Hill’s been trying to tell you this whole time, by means of making the Penitents go to extreme lengths to protect you when you were in mortal danger, that  **I never truly stopped protecting you** . Those creatures were mirror images of my desire to protect you with my own life, no matter what the personal cost, and the town birthed them to remind you of my selfless love for you, the love that motivated me to sacrifice myself on the bridge for your sake.  **That** is the lesson of the Penitent, Zabuza:  **not even death can separate me from you, can prevent me from walking by your side and guarding you from mortal danger.** ”

Zabuza felt his tears continue to stream down his cheeks as he managed to give his lover a smile, knowing full well that Haku was right. Haku beamed back at him, and stepped back, taking Zabuza’s large hands in his own, and giving them an affectionate squeeze.

“Your journey here in Silent Hill is almost finished, Zabuza,” he told the renegade warmly. “I watched you progress from a wounded person denying their pain to a mature survivor who went out of his way to comfort individuals you previously blamed for my own suffering. So many other hurting souls have now found true peace thanks to the selfless kindness you gladly showed them, wandering souls who’ve now found their rest after the support you gave them after learning the importance of forgiveness. There’s only one person left you need to forgive, Zabuza.”

“Who?” Zabuza softly asked, confused but desperate to hear the answer.

Haku squeezed his hands gently again, and whispered to him, “ **Yourself, Zabuza.** It’s time you forgive yourself, to allow yourself to move on. You know that it wasn’t your fault I died; it was the loving, selfless choice I made, because your life meant the world to me, and I’ve never regretted that choice, not for an instant. Yes, it was your choice to take on Gato’s corrupt mission that ultimately placed us on that bridge, but the choice to sacrifice myself was mine to make, not yours. I gave you that sacrifice gladly, and it broke my heart watching you punish yourself for that choice I made. Please, Zabuza. Please, forgive yourself!”

Zabuza grimaced, biting his lip and looking away in shame. Although he had fully confronted his pain and the memories that had haunted him for so long, he still blamed himself for Haku’s death, and his lover’s words struck true.

“Is that really ok though, Haku?” he asked. “Is it ok for me to forgive myself for the mistake I made, for taking your love for granted?”

“ **Yes** , Zabuza,” Haku answered firmly, and Zabuza redirected his gaze back into the boy’s brown eyes. “I never held that against you, and everybody else has forgiven you already. So please! Please, let it all go!”

It felt almost like Silent Hill itself was waiting with bated breath to hear what Zabuza would say next; he had an uncanny sense that the town hadn’t stopped watching his every move, even after he was sure that it had abandoned him to a grisly death. He took a deep breath, and replied to Haku with confidence.

“ **Then I forgive myself, Haku, my beloved, my only. Yes, I forgive myself.** ”

At those words, a powerful rush of wind filled the basement, rustling Haku’s long raven-black hair as he grinned up at Zabuza. A massive weight had been lifted off of his heart, and he felt freer than he had felt in a long time.

“I’m so, so proud of you, Zabuza,” Haku told him. “You’ve come so far, and you’ve fulfilled every goal this town set before you. It’s time for you to continue onto the next chapter.”

The divine glow surrounding Haku’s body slowly began to expand, and Zabuza felt panic rush through him at the thought that they were about to be separated once more. He placed his large hands on Haku’s frail shoulders, and leaned in so that their faces were only a couple of inches apart.

“Please, Haku, I’m begging you!” Zabuza hoarsely pleaded as the light started to blind him. “Don’t leave me again!”

Haku gently told him, “ **I never left you, Zabuza. Though you might not be able to see me, you’ll always feel me close by, watching over you as your guardian angel. Love will ensure that we’ll never be separated, and this bond between us can’t be broken. I’ll be with you, cheering you on as I watch you take on this wondrous new part of your life.** ”

Just before the light filled his surroundings, Zabuza’s heart swelled with happiness as Haku stood on his tiptoes and tenderly kissed him, a kiss that Zabuza gladly returned. For what felt like a good minute, the two soulmates remained locked in their love, and Zabuza was sure that he would never forget the peace that the soul-touching kiss gave him.

When the light faded away, Zabuza found himself on the side of a winding road, next to a large wooden sign welcoming visitors to Silent Hill. The dark basement and the Gillespie house were far behind him out of sight, and although he couldn’t see Haku by his side, like the boy had said, Zabuza could still feel his warmth lifting his spirits.

_ “It’s over. It’s finally over. And it feels so good to know that Haku never actually left me.” _

He felt something like paper in his right hand, and when he glanced at it, Zabuza saw that he had somehow acquired a handful of $20 bills, more than enough to get him transportation to Augusta, where Yugao had implored her to meet him after finishing his journey in Silent Hill. After pocketing the cash gratefully, he walked calmly for a what must’ve been an hour, before seeing a casual countryside bus stop appearing ahead.

_ “Haku must know that something big awaits me in Augusta. But what, exactly? What is this next chapter supposed to entail?” _

A new bus was conveniently approaching from the far end of the road, and Zabuza knew that it was time for him to meet the future headon. His heart was filled with peace as he drew closer to the oncoming bus, the vehicle that would carry him to Augusta, and whatever destiny awaited him there. 


	14. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of Rape

_ (One month later) _

 

After the turmoil that they’d both suffered after the loss of their soulmates, and after Silent Hill had put them both through a tempestuous journey in order to help them heal, Momochi Zabuza and Uzuki Yugao found their humble brick apartment in the middle of Augusta, Maine to be Heaven on Earth. Once he had arrived in the quaint riverside capital of Maine, Zabuza had headed straight for the homeless shelter in the center of the city, where he successfully reunited with Yugao, his fellow survivor. They both had received a free roof over their heads, until Yugao’s money had fully transferred to a new American account, enabling her to buy a decent two-bedroom apartment that she gladly paid for them both, until Zabuza could find a suitable job. 

Yugao had quickly found favor with Augusta’s police department, earning herself a position as a Field Tactician, sharing her wisdom and experiences with the American officers in order to better their practices. The glowing recommendations of her former superiors in Kyoto had helped her gain the job, but as she had nervously shared with Zabuza afterwards, she would be forever uncertain if they’d ever act on their logical and correct suspicion that she was the culprit behind Baki’s violent murder.

As for Zabuza, the kind-hearted people at Augusta’s homeless shelter had begged him to share his own experiences as a man who’d lived in the slums of Osaka for as long as he could remember. The fact that he was openly gay after his passage through Silent Hill only strengthened their desire to hear him speak.

Later that afternoon, the two of them would head back to the shelter, so that Zabuza could give a public speech about the importance of taking preventing children from becoming homeless, especially gay youth like Haku. He and Yugao sat at their kitchen table, both dressed handsomely for the event, sipping at fresh cups of coffee as they warily pored over the daily newspaper, which contained an unnerving front-page article.

 

_ “Japanese Criminal Kabuto Yakushi Found Dead in Silent Hill, Maine” _

_ The desperate mission of Kyoto’s police department, along with the federal government of Japan to capture the fugitive criminal Kabuto Yakushi ended when the man’s corpse was found in Alchemilla Hospital, one of the main medical centers of Silent Hill, a quiet town in Maine. It remains unknown why Yakushi was in Silent Hill, one of America’s most remote towns. Yakushi had been killed by a single gunshot to the chest, and evidently bled to death in the middle of the hospital’s operating theater. American officials have been unable to identify the killer, who may’ve been a vigilante seeking the man’s death after learning of the horrific crimes he committed in Japan.  _

_ Kabuto Yakushi was the accomplice of Maenari Nobuo, a man once hailed as one of Japan’s finest biological researchers before being revealed as “Orochimaru”, a monstrous man behind the kidnapping and deaths of dozens of young Japanese girls. Yakushi lured his victims away from their families with his gentlemanly facade, and took them to an underground facility on the outskirts of Kyoto, where the two “researchers” performed horrific human experiments that resulted in the deaths of all the subjected girls. Had it not been for the heroic efforts of Captain Gekkou Hayate of Kyoto’s police department, the martyr who helped Miss Mitarashi escape her captors and relate her testimony to his superiors shortly before being assasinated by Orochimaru’s hired hitman, it is likely that the world never would’ve learned of the atrocities committed in that research facility. _

_ Only one person shed tears over Kabuto Yakushi’s death: the foster-mother who raised him many years ago, Nonou Kikimoto, who now resides in a nursing home at Kitakyushu. Miss Kikimoto learned of her foster-son’s deeds and death at the same time the rest of the world did, and was nothing short of heartbroken at what he’d become. _

_ “He was so innocent, so sweet, and so kind during the years he spent under my roof,” she told Japanese journalists.  “Out of all the children I took in, he was the one who I was most certain would become a caretaker like me, helping other orphans like him heal. But instead, he destroyed so many young lives, all for the sake of his and Orochimaru’s greedy, selfish desire to achieve whatever power they so foolishly thought they could obtain by slaughtering those girls like guinea pigs. What happened to him? What happened to the boy I raised?” _

_ It stands to reason that Miss Kikimoto is the only individual who will ever shed tears over Yakushi’s death. His is a loss that will not be missed, especially by the families of the victims. _

_ But there is much joy to be shared at this point in time. While they will forever be grief-stricken by what happened to their daughters, the parents of the murdered girls wrote the following announcement of gratitude to the individual who gunned down Yakushi: _

_ “From the bottom of hearts, forever and always, thank you for granting our daughters the justice we were certain would be forever denied to them. Whoever you are, wherever you are, know no matter what happens, you’ll always be our greatest hero for hunting down that sick man and preventing him from causing further tragedies. Our hearts will always ache for our girls, but while we shed our tears of sorrow over their losses, we also shed tears of undying gratitude for what you did. Thank you.” _

_ With both Orochimaru and Yakushi now dead, two major child-killers have been defeated by justice. Let this be a lesson to all like-minded murderers hiding among us behind their pretty masks: no matter how high your position, no matter how much money you have, no matter how arrogantly certain you may be that you won’t be caught, you will reap in due time the bitter reward for the pain you sow.  _

 

Zabuza looked up from the paper into Yugao’s proud smile, softly weeping at the overwhelming gratitude of the parents’ message. He still hadn’t forgotten the horror of realizing how many girls had been murdered by Orochimaru and Kabuto, the image of the dozens of bitterly weeping victims still haunting his dreams.

“You’re a hero after all, Zabuza,” Yugao gently told him, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. “Let this be a reminder that no matter what you did in the past, the choices you’ve made here in the present have clearly shown what a wonderful man you truly are.”

He wiped away at his tears and told her, “Yugao, this feels like a dream. I never imagined anybody ever praising me like this. It doesn’t feel real.”

“It’s going to, after we’re done with the public meeting,” she said. “How do you feel?”   
“Nervous,” he admitted. Zabuza had never enjoyed public speaking, and that certainly wasn’t about to change. “I’m almost afraid to go up on that stage.”

“Who wouldn’t be? The only people we know there will be the shelter employees, and on top of that, there’s the obvious fact that in this current era, people might not take your sexuality warmly.”

“Then fuck them, Yugao. I’m doing this for Haku, and if they don’t take what happened to him seriously all because they’re squeamish about the idea of two men loving each other, I’ll gladly make a fool of them all.”

“That’s the spirit!”

They drained the last dregs of coffee from their mugs, and set them down on the table, looking at each other quietly, taking a long moment to enjoy the peace surrounding them. Outside, the balcony glass door revealed a glorious sunset illuminating the brick-laden city, casting a golden glow over everything in sight. Augusta was gradually awakening to a beautiful day. Along with the soft heat of the sunlight filling their apartment, Zabuza felt Haku’s loving warmth still surrounding him, the presence permanently palpable after their reunion in the basement of Alessa’s old home.

Yugao gently asked him, “Would you like me to stand with you on the stage, for support?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Zabuza answered without hesitating. “There’s no way I won’t get choked up when I inevitably mention what happened to Haku while he was homeless.”

“Then I’ll gladly stand by you, Zabuza.”

Several hours later, they stood together on the humble wooden stage of the homeless shelter’s gym, where dozens of folding chairs had been set up for Augusta’s populace to sit in. To Zabuza and Yugao’s delight, the event had turned out to be a full-house, with every single seat taken by citizens of varying backgrounds. The shelter’s announcement had provoked a far bigger response than anybody could’ve imagined. 

Once the chief of staff gave her signal to them, Zabuza cleared his throat, took a shaky step forward, and began his talk.

“Thank you all for coming here tonight. It means so much to me, seeing how many people showed up here for this talk. My name is Zabuza Momochi, and I’m a man who spent the vast majority of his years living on the streets of Osaka. I had no real home, and I barely managed to survive by taking on various assignments that only gave me just enough money to scrap by until my next task. I was ignored by Japanese society, never taken seriously by everyday civilians, and in general, I felt frowned upon, like I was a nuisance to society just by existing. I felt like a stain on my country and...it only got worse when I eventually had to confront the reality of me being gay, too.”

At that, a great deal of murmuring could be heard in the audience, and Zabuza gritted his teeth in frustration at the sight of several people casting malicious side glances at him as they whispered things to their neighbors. Yugao muttered a curse under her breath as the employees looked around nervously, unsure of what to do.

Zabuza raised his voice, snapping at them coldly, “If all it takes is for somebody to be gay for you to despise them, even after you people supposedly had enough compassion to want to hear a victim of homelessness speak, then in my eyes, you’re no better than the bastard who raped my lover!”

The instant he said those awful words, a horrified silence fell over the entire gymnasium, to Zabuza’s grim satisfaction. He felt Yugao place a reassuring hand on his shoulder as he felt his eyes tear up, the memory of Haku’s attacker looming over the frightened boy burning a horrid image in his mind’s eye.

“The love of my life, a young gay youth named Haku, was also homeless after forced to flee his home when he killed his murderous Dad in self-defense. He had no help from anybody, and because he had always been naturally effeminate to the point that many mistook him for a girl, he was seen as weak, and easy prey. At one point in his life as a homeless youth, he was so desperate to sustain himself that he turned to prostitution, and put his trust in a lone policeman, a supposed protector of justice, who had an apparent interest in him. That officer intentionally used Haku’s trust to corner him, and…”

He choked up, and would’ve collapsed on the stage had Yugao not reached out for him in time. Zabuza let himself sob as he heard the audience weep likewise, his vicious revelation knocking the prideful citizens off their high horses. When he finally opened his eyes, blinking away blurry tears, he could see that even the ones who had been clearly gossiping about him had their heads clutched in their hands, shaking with the force of their own mortified grief.

He said to them, “Haku assumed that a would-be trustworthy member of society would protect and help him...but he was wrong. I’ve only lived here in Augusta for a month, but I’ve seen the exact damn thing. Those of us who find this shelter are lucky enough to have our basic needs covered, but the others who have no choice but to make the streets their home...everybody ignores them, even the hypocrites who prance around collecting money for ‘homeless relief efforts’. It’s unwise and vain to expect somebody else to take care of them, and from what Haku’s story told me, homeless people, especially vulnerable gay youth, are seen as targets for cruelty instead of hurting individuals that need solace.”

To the right of the audience, Zabuza saw the chief of staff crying but nodding her head in firm approval. He breathed sharply when he felt another, lighter hand place itself on his back, and Zabuza knew that Haku was silently supporting him too in his tense moment of declaration. 

“I later lost Haku when I got myself into a gunfight that I could’ve easily avoided. He took the bullet that was meant for me, and died shortly afterwards. Even after being brutalized and mistreated by so many others, he didn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself for the sake of another. Society wants to view homeless people as selfish, wasteful individuals, when the harsh reality is that the opposite is much more true.”

“Apathy will get us nowhere. The homeless living on the streets of our city won’t be rescued by mere shrugs of acknowledgment. That, and gay youth forced into homelessness by their families could be wounded like Haku was, if nobody moves to protect them. It’s our duty to show them all that we care, in actions, not just in passing words.”

Zabuza had the audience's full attention, and he said softly, “ **I want to ensure that nobody gets hurt like Haku was, ever again, no matter how worthless society deems them to be. And I won’t rest until my mission is fully accomplished.** ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading “Snow White and the Vagabond: a Silent Hill Love Story”! This was a work that I was worried I’d never be able to finish because of life’s many interruptions, writer’s block, and my at times crippling fear that the story would never be good enough. Even when I’d imagined how to end it in a satisfactory way, I nearly gave up on this ¾ of the way through, partly because I was disheartened by the underwhelming response I was getting, but also because I had doubts that I could make myself sit down and finish it to the ultimate end. This is one of the times I’m glad to be wrong.
> 
> As a young gay man who’s studied discrimination here in America, who’s learned about how many others like me have been forced to live on the streets because their family disowned them and society rejected them, I wanted to craft something darkly realistic about the dangers they face, even from supposed guardians of justice like police officers. That, and I’ve never been satisfied with how Haku’s death in canon was handled; Zabuza and Kakashi didn’t react as severely as I thought they should’ve, especially Zabuza. Writing my interpretation of that infamous scene was extremely important to me, because I wanted to focus on the deep love between Haku and Zabuza, explicitly from the gay point of view. I daresay it worked.
> 
> On a somewhat random note, especially for the SH fans who read this fic, I highly recommend checking out the following song: “Richtung Lichtung” by Ali As.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqwPPZaWkaU
> 
> It’s base is “Pianissimo Epilogue”, the end ranking theme for SH2. When I ran the lyrics through Google Translate, I discovered that the song is about running for the light at the end of the tunnel, with your soulmate by your side, no matter how desolate the world around you seems to be. I consider it to be a perfect theme song for Zabuza and Haku’s love story.
> 
> Thank you all again for reading my story! I gladly welcome any and all feedback you have to offer.
> 
> -nightwish435


End file.
